We keep hearing that marketers increasingly like the idea of Web series as a promotional tool, and are finally starting to pay more for them. Case in point: the WSJ says Vogue and IMG are producing a 12-episode online reality series called Model.Live for $3 million, or about $31,000 a minute.

That’s quite a leap from Michael Eisner’s “Foreign Body,” which at $5,000 a minute had “big” budget by Web video standards.

Clothing retailer Express LLC paid a little more than $1 million to sponsor the series, and Vogue is guaranteeing Express 83.4 million views during three months on Bebo.com.

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While DreamWorks, Lionsgate and even Cash-Machine Manoj all have Indian capital to thank for their varying degrees of independence, Terry Semel is apparently courting a few billion dollars from Dubai as he nears a deal to acquire the management giant (and burgeoning media player) IMG. The ex-Warner Bros./Yahoo! kingpin has had his eye on Teddy Forstmann’s hobby since at least June, when it was rumored Semel was knocking on a few gilded doors around the Middle East, hat in hand.

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