Smaller publishers face a real uphill battle when it comes to video search, panelists at the OMMA Video show said on Monday. The question of how you get that “Google juice”, as moderator Andy Plesser of BeetTV called it, is a pivotal one for video publishers, and it falls on them to maximize their content for search engine crawlers. For the moment, text search is still king for video search, which means publishers need to make sure they've applied as much meta data as they can to their videos so they'll turn up in search results on sites like …

“I would venture to say that it is somebody you have never heard of,” ventured venture capitalist Neil Sequeira, principal of General Catalyst Partners, when asked that question. “This is so early. Everyone is struggling in the dark to figure out what the right content and model is,” he noted, suggesting that is the great thing about the Internet â€" that anyone who can figure out the next dynamic model for building critical mass with content, and figuring out how to monetize it will be successful in the online video business. How successful …

Asked if the online video marketplace is in the throes of bubble bursting, some leading online video venturists â€" both on the capital giving and capital receiving side, were a little unclear. “I think if we're in a bubble, there's much more bubbling to be had,” gushed a fairly bubbly Jane Hu or Vuguru/Tornante. “I actually don't have an answer on whether we're in the middle of a bubble or not. I'm much too close to it.” Warren Lee, Principal, Canaan Partners, was a little more definitive, asserting, “There is a bubble, but …

Conference goers received a rare glimpse into what marketers are paying for standard online video ad formats at the OMMA Video show in New York on Monday. Philip Braden from the video ad network ScanScout, one of the many companies that helped popularize the overlay, said his company charges a minimum $10 CPM. Eric Hadley, CMO of Heavy.com, which serves a targeted audience of 18-34 males, charges a $25-30 CPM. And Rebecca Paoletti, Yahoo's director of video strategy, said that low-priced CPMs for standard untargeted ads start at $25 per thousand views on Yahoo. For Chris Allen, the lone …

If you ask the Web's major research firms, and CNET's Dan Ackerman did just that at the 2008 OMMA Video show in New York on Monday, the future of Web measurement still belongs to panels. As Maniak Mazumdar of Nielson Online said, “Our goal is to measure people,” not machines. Sure, there are gaps in the measurement, he added, “but the key is the consumer.” Mazumder said he feels that server measurement has a place, but you need panel data to understand how the consumer interacts with content. ComScore's Lynn Bolger agreed, adding that the role panel data plays …

For all the debate surrounding online audience measurement, it all comes down to a very simple principle: What is it that you actually want to measure. At least that's how Lynn Bolger, executive vice president-AdSolutions at comScore sees it.

Cue another "size doesn't matter" reference: AvenueA/Razorfish's Jeremy Lockhorn said it's not about the size of your audience but rather how engaged they are with your brand that matters in matters concerning branded content. For the advertiser, he says it's much more about passion and knowing what's unique about that audience.

An audience member wanted to know how people find out what kind of video content is on the Web if they don't have a specific destination in mind. Media Contacts' TS Kelly quickly responded that “there is no one solution out there for an individual.

With quips like that, you'd think this was another kind of online video conference, but as the quipster, Media Contacts' TS Kelly pointed out after quipping, "It's not that kind of video."

The more everything changes, it stays the same, panelist Andy Von Kennel of Measure2x quipped, as creative shops and their measurement firm cousins fish around for that elusive metric that marketers like to call "engagement."