• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, January 25, 2010

Video ad network YuMe on Monday is expected to announce the addition of Scot McLernon as its new chief revenue officer.

"I'm a believer in hard trends, and I still think the video space continue to be white-hot," said McLernon. In his new role, McLernon will lead YuMe's video ad sales team, with a particular focus on its flagship video ad management platform ACE.

As McLernon sees it, YuMe -- and the broader video advertising and technology industry -- continue to face two key challenges: execution and tapping TV dollars.

"We have to do a terrific job of execution," he said. With regard to online video, he added: "It's been a difficult market to buy, and a difficult market to sell -- penetrating the TV market requires using all our available assets."

Most recently, McLernon spent about 2 years as president of Upstream Group, where he developed Habitat -- a training and networking event for sellers. Previously, McLernon built and led the Web advertising sales team at CBS Marketwatch.

YuMe ranked as the third-largest U.S. video ad network in November, with 73.4 million unique viewers and a potential reach of 43% of online video viewers, according to comScore. YuMe said it served more than 2.5 billion in-stream ads in the fourth quarter of 2009 -- its highest quarterly total to date.

Today, 71% of the U.S. online audience watches video online, while Forrester expects the number of streams consumed to more than double by 2013. Driving this growth is an explosion of video content from users, professional studios, and marketers.

YuMe presently offers about 20 different ad units spanning different types of pre-, mid- and post-rolls, overlays and page takeovers that advertisers can customize further by choosing different features.

The company's broader efforts include encouraging marketers to experiment with different formats and features in video advertising.

Gian Lombardi, vice president of Sales East, and Sonya Chawla, Vice President of Sales West, will continue to manage their territories reporting into McLernon.