• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, January 19, 2011

According to ad agency execs speaking Wednesday at MediaPost's OMMA Video show in San Francisco, it's about striking the right balance.

"Scale is obviously important, but it depends on the client and audience we're talking about," said Adam Seymour, senior vp and managing director of digital for Optimedia.

"It's always a struggle to strike that balance," added Jeremy Lockhorn, vp of emerging media and video innovation of Razorfish. He noted that most big brand marketers have a need to be associated with a particular kind of content. Sure, "ad nets can drive scale, but what's the content?"

Michael Smit, vp and managing director of Academy, pointed out the complexity of analyzing a video campaign's performance given the different ad formats, pricing models and metrics. "What do I need to prove to invest more in the space?" There's definitely "an education element" involved, he said.

Seymour agreed, adding that certain clients need to become more platform agnostic to move mass dollars into video. "It's a long conversation," he said, because of the complexity. "Some are into it and some pull out halfway through...education and comfort level are the biggest obstacles to moving more budget online."