I can't tell you how many times I've heard industry professionals lament about their technology ads reaching "the right people, in the right places at the right time." These professionals love to say things like, "With all this real-time targeting these days, how can a marketer possibly waste any of their advertising dollars?" Since I'm an agreeable guy, I try not to rain on peoples' parades when talking to them casually in person. That said, this column seems like an appropriate forum to say: Waste occurs when you reach the right person, in the right place, at the right time, …

"Video snacking" describes how millions of people are creating viewing habits around quick & consistent consumption of video. I see evidence of this trend everyday in my work with Grab Networks, based on our server data. And, last month somScore published highlights of its video reporting for November 2008 that support this trend.

Last year, we pondered the question of why DRTV advertisers hadn't yet embraced online video as an outlet for sales generation. At the time, an easy answer could have been "who cares?" The media landscape as a whole was in the middle of a relatively strong year, with online continuing its excellent growth. Fast-forward a few months, and things certainly look a lot different.

Video marketing is a big field encompassing many kinds of video presentation, including branded videos, pre-roll and interstitial advertisements, and product demonstrations. Increasingly, budgets are shifting to this (relatively) new category. In part, this is due to a growing recognition among media planners that video marketing can deliver cost-effective and high-bar results. But what are these results, and how are they best measured?

When the major consumer ISPs began to announce that use of their broadband services would be metered, the mainstream and trade press warned: "Bandwidth hogs, beware." But it's really publishers and marketers who should be wary.

The Jan. 26th decision made by the ever-so-knowledgeable U.S. Senate to delay the complete transition to DTV is yet another example of the lack of leadership, and a Federal Communications Commission. that continues to be the poodle lap-dog of the U.S. Congress. So, on Feb.17, all of the planning, expense, and efforts that broadcasters have painfully undertaken will continue to be unrequited. These broadcasters will still have to operate their analog operations and that means additional costs that they were not planning to incur. This ludicrous decision will be especially difficult for PBS, which estimates the cost of the delay …

Super Bowl 43 was memorable for several reasons, so much so that the media world is still buzzing about it a week later. It was arguably one of the best games ever, and certainly one of the most exciting fourth quarters in recent history. A record number of viewers tuned in as well -- Nielsen's final report put it at 98.7 million, up a full million over last year.

It seems not a fortnight goes by without a discussion on digital video ad efficacy, ad format standards and the debate on whether it's better to measure ROI through direct response, or if the harder-to-measure brand lift is more important. Many of us are charging hard to demonstrate advertising efficacy et al. within our solutions: CPC as the new and improved sales model, while NASA-like-quantification ROI models and reporting tools are at the top of our sales tools box. But are all these concepts and capabilities really the right way to go into battle today to win the war on …

How quickly things can change. In November '08, eMarketer estimated that online video advertising would grow close to 45% in 2009. But before we start running through the office hallways yelling "All hail 2009 -- the year of online video," we might want to take a realistic look at the potential barriers to growth the current economy might have on online video (insert "Wah-Wah" here).

Despite the mostly weak display of conceptual and copywriting prowess (if you can call it that) that was this year's crop of Super Bowl ads, one ad that stood out in the mind of this creative director as being particularly useless was the Alec Baldwin shill for NBC/FOX's Hulu online video platform. What a lost opportunity.