Maybe Kara Manatt’s presentation should have stayed in the dark. When the lights came back on. So did some disappointing data points showing that online video ads are declining in popularity among consumers. The most favorable online ad formats are banners, skyscrapers, advergames, and something called “ghost ads” (sounds spooky!). While online video ranks about halfway down the list, Manatt said they’ve eroded over the past few years. “That can be attributed to the novelty wearing off,” she said, suggesting, “This really shows that it’s important to learn what really works in …

Normally, the technical glitches at industry conferences involve high-tech issues like computers, Internet access and presentation formats. OMMA Video got off to a false start this morning because of a far more fundamental technology: electricity. A few minutes into her opening presentation, Dynamic Logic Research Director Kara Manatt got the plug pulled on her â€" literally. The juice supporting all the stage technology â€" her microphone, the screen projector and some of the lights in the room â€" went dark. Wish I had my camcorder. It was worthy of a YouTube upload.

OMMA Video conference chair Steve Smith got things off with some mother-in-law research. Actually, it was daughter-and-her-friends research. Steve said he got to observe the changes taking place with online video in his own living room the other day, as his daughter and her friends say with a myriad of entertainment devices spread before them. Which one did they jack on to? Apple TV. “There they were sitting on the floor with a remote, a search box and telling each other what to search for online,” Smith said. “In the next few hours, they went through everything: Abbott & …

It's nice to see even the biggest of new digital media companies still believes in the smallest of national TV media. TV Week reports Yahoo! and Twentieth Television are thinking about launching a magazine type show filled with - what else? -- user generated and other popular videos. All this seems a little quaint -- especially considering TV syndication was once considered an alternative to the broadcast networks, then replaced by cable TV programming, which, in turn, has been replaced by the Internet.

In the 24 hours leading up to this morning's OMMA Video conference in Los Angeles, I've gone through a storyline worthy of a network prime-time series -- at least one worthy of the writer's stroke-ridden schedule, or more likely on YouTube. It began when I was speaking to my best friend early yesterday. We were talking about our favorite, "must-see" network shows, when he told me how disappointed he was to miss the season finale of his favorite, Fox's "24." I said, why not go onto Hulu? He said, "Hulu who?" I found this striking because he's a media …