• by Bill Lederer , May 12, 2011

While we all have grown immensely over the past year, online and mobile video is still Precambrian:  an underdeveloped, but now sizable medium in its own right. If we are going to take our act to the next level soon, there are six actions that should take priority to ready ourselves and the medium for major new investment from marketers.

Strengthen Physical Delivery and Make Ad Operations and Workflows EasierFirst and foremost, we need to take a step back. Just as in other high-tech industries, shiny new objects get all the attention, while some of the most basic obvious issues get pushed under the rug. Video delivery and fulfillment technology must continue to advance and become more transparent to better address concerns of both consumers and advertisers. Concurrently, video ad operations and video workflows must become easier.

Classifying UGC and Prosumer in Marketer-Relevant Ways While Ensuring Brand SafetyThere is simply a ton of UGC and Prosumer content being created and distributed each day. For the business model of these creators and their publishers to be sustainable, this content must become advertiser-friendly. Advertisers need to be assured that the content they are advertising on and near is acceptable, relevant, and -- even more importantly -- poses no risk to their brand health. Not only do standards need to be solidified, technology companies need to create better way to classify this brand-safe and relevant content.

Continued Expansion of Quality Content on Multiple DevicesMan cannot live on UGC alone. In order to court more advertisers, the audience needs to continue to grow such that video's reach better mirrors the entire spending population. This will only happen if publishers offer premium content from both major studios and independent creators. These publishers must also aggressively push this content onto every conceivable connected device.  Technology companies will need to innovate technical frameworks to ease the burden of creating and syndicating video to all these new devices.

Continued Innovation in Formats, Targeting, and OptimizationTool providers, video ad networks and publishers should continue to innovate aggressively to differentiate as they elevate online video ahead of other mediums. Innovative targeting and ad formats that are dynamic and engage audiences are crucial to the medium's success. Content and ads should further leverage the power of audience data allowing for advanced multi-layered, real-time targeting and measurement. Finally, this all needs to be tied together with advanced creative optimization that goes beyond engagement and click-thru to optimization around solid brand metrics.

Standardize Content Identification, Asset Tagging, and Easy-to-Understand VideoMetrics In short, we all need to know on a cost-effective basis the 360^o of video distribution and consumption. We need to be able to track digital assets wherever they go inside and across channels and as they intersect with audiences and their related behavior and attitudes. Today, we lack consistent definitions, robust standards, accountable performance reporting, and too often the media planner/buyer and her client are left with a whole lot of caveat emptor.  Similarly, the content creator and distributor is often not sure what their best commercially viable story is and how much to charge. We need to come together as a community and cooperate on standard guidelines for metrics, such as the different kinds of video "views" and what video play event data should be made available. 

Creating and Nurturing the Video Agency of Record (VAOR)Finally, a Video Agency of Record needs to emerge to help advertisers understand all parts of this complex ecosystem and take advantage of all it has to offer. VAORs can help us all come together to better integrate and raise value for our clients helping highlight our challenges and strengths. There are so many vendors for so many different video products and services that quite often under the current "holistic" approach espoused by many Mad Men, strategies and campaigns wind up appearing Frankenstein-like in their creative and media execution. The results are sometimes effective, but rarely efficient or optimal. Competition is important, but video competence, focus and integration will create more value for advertisers until this Golden Age of Video Innovation matures.

Paint me as a video industry optimist. Though we will undoubtedly find bumps along the video marketing autobahn-especially in volatile pricing and inventory availability borne of more transparent performance data and future vendor consolidation, making positive steps on the initiatives identified above will allow us all to bask in the coming rewards.