As you're reading this, we're busy cataloguing new ad campaigns for the Sochi Winter Olympics. But as of this weekend, there are only 19 Winter Olympics campaigns -- far less than what was catalogued for the 2012 Summer Olympics. But that doesn't mean that there isn't great branded video being released now. The Olympic regulars -- Procter & Gamble, Visa, Coca-Cola, McDonald's and Liberty Mutual, among others -- are garnering many views with their campaigns.

What constitutes video these days? Streaming movies and TV shows? Viral content? Ads on websites, in the backseat of taxis, on elevators? Video no longer means a VHS tape; there's a lot more to it than that. And the way that advertising works across these platforms, by necessity, is rapidly changing.

Did someone actually see my ad? That's a simple question, but as many marketers are discovering in display, the answer is often complicated. If the industry does not act soon, video may suffer the same fate.

If there's ever a time for advertisers to bring everything they've got to the table, it's the Super Bowl. At $4 million a spot, the pressure is on when it comes to making those 30 seconds count. This year, brands stuck with the tried and true, but with a twist. And advertisers across the field brought back content that's been proven to work. This trend was perhaps most evident in 2014's most viral Super Bowl campaign. With over 43 million views as of Monday morning, Budweiser's "Puppy Love" plays off the success of last year's "Clydesdales."

TV Everywhere is taking off. So says the early data. The number of authenticated TV Everywhere streams doubled in 2013 to 574.2 million, up from 222.5 million in 2012, according to a just-released report from Adobe benchmarking the service. Adobe powers many of the TV Everywhere rollouts from cablers.

There has been an eye-opening surge in the development and introduction of new T/V (Television/Video) formats. These innovations lay ground for improvements I have been hoping to see more of in 2014, particularly online video viewability and buying on a cost-per-view (CPV) basis. Many developers are also adding that layer of interactivity that the industry began hearing about in the mid-1990s.

The imperative of the video business is simple: grow the audience. The health of the individual content provider and the greater video economy depend on an active, satisfied and increasingly large viewing audience. Technology is really helping here. Under the old studio/network model, scheduled programming sprang from the forehead of some executive god. But Big Data and the algorithm now determine what you watch next (past practice will be an indicator of future performance.) Science! Progress! But this tech-driven future - relying on data to grow the audience - has a dystopian aspect to it that poses a threat to …