As I spend more time in the video game world, both for work and pleasure, I see an increasing push by vendors to deliver in-game video advertising. Let's talk about where and how to best use video in gaming environments without aggravating me... I mean, the gamer.

Christmas (or take your pick of any other seasonal holiday) came early this year for rich-media companies and advertising agencies when MySpace, Yahoo and YouTube were among the publishers that pushed user-required Flash 8, enabling penetration rates to reach nearly 90 percent in less than 12 months.

As online video advertising heats up, the question becomes, who actually owns the budget and the buy? Typically, media planners and buyers specialize in their own medium and, when they combine this with others, create a total plan that offers the client a complete and well-rounded campaign. However, with the advent and growth of online video advertising, the lines are getting fuzzy. Is it an online buy or is it a TV buy?

The latest new technology coming down the path of change is called switched broadcast. This new bandwidth-expanding technology, hotly pursued by MSOs and telecos, makes it unnecessary to deliver hundreds of channels simultaneously to a subscriber's home. This dramatic change in distribution technology, largely invisible to the consumer, allows operators to free up valuable bandwidth behind the scenes for (what else) additional digital services.

We hear it all the time: there's a scarcity of inventory for online video advertisers. Although it seems to be the prevailing wisdom, it's simply not true.

If you are like me, you were probably amazed at the seemingly endless analyses of the Google purchase of YouTube. Speculation on the rationale runs the gamut--from monetizing each of an estimated 100 million daily YouTube video views, to Google using the site to test reaction to video ads before they are moved to a broadcast or cable network. Whatever turns out to be correct, I am sure Google will help online video get that much closer to competing for the $60+ billion spend on TV video advertising.

With the explosion in Internet video--news and entertainment, video ads, and 100 million user-generated video clips pouring onto YouTube--has the time arrived for the much-maligned corporate video to get an "extreme makeover"?

Do we underestimate our brands' most loyal consumers? Of course, I am not referring to their intelligence, but to their creativity and passion for the brand. Today's question is this--who can sell your brand better, the person you've hired to sell it or the person who has used the product for most of his life? And if peer-to-peer is as powerful a mechanism for your brand as research indicates, should your consumers create your video advertising?

I know. I know. Too much has already been written about the Google/YouTube deal--from the jokes on late night TV to Mark Cuban's firestorm ("only a moron would buy YouTube") to fears of a fire hose of copyright suits to breathless recounting of the numbers. But, aside from all the hype, it's important to understand how the deal impacts the online video advertising industry.

Tracking in online advertising is about to take some dramatic and revolutionary turns with the rise of online broadcasting.