• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, April 28, 2009

As CPMs continue to decline, agencies and Web publishers locked horns Tuesday over the notion of an oversaturated premium online video market.

"I absolutely believe there is an oversupply of premium online video," Chris Allen, vice president and video innovations director at Starcom USA, said at Media Magazine's 2009 Upfront Conference in New York.

"There's plenty of supply -- too much to justify putting money down on a quarterly basis," Allen said with regard to online media upfronts.

Rebecca Paoletti, a fellow panelist and senior director of video strategy at Yahoo, disagreed. "[Marketers] don't have enough for the [target audiences] they're looking for," she said. "If they're coming in with a very specific target, there's not so much."

Backing up Paoletti's position was Anthony Soohoo, senior vice president and general manager of entertainment and lifestyle at CBS Interactive. "We actually don't have enough inventory," said Soohoo. "There is a constraint."

Due to what he called "rights issues," Soohoo admitted that CBS has yet to make all of its shows available online.

On the controversial topic of ad networks, agency and publisher executives were not completely at odds.

"We like ad networks," Paoletti said, explaining that forecasting consumer behavior and planning media buys can be difficult for any online sales team. "We're in a world where anything can go viral ... That's the place where can ad networks come into play."

For the purpose of adding "incremental reach," Allen added, "we actually think there's a value to ad networks."

Soohoo said that while CBS does not make a "blanket statement" that they won't use ad networks, the company generally does not. "We like to control the [process]," he said.