Describing not immodestly its own forecast as "bold," The Diffusion Group argues in a new report that by 2020, Internet video consumption will outstrip broadcast TV viewing. Now there is a caveat to this prediction. TDG is talking about video that is stored and distributed over IP, but they aren't necessarily saying the video will be viewed from people's desktop. In fact the key to this shift in video platform is the living room TV itself. Over the next 5 to 7 years, the researchers say the TV will become the primary viewing vehicle for Web video.

What will people pay for online? We are about to see in coming months as a range of publishers erect new pay walls, fee-based packages and tiered services. Is video one of the commodities worth paying to get? Christian Science Monitor seems to think the answer still resides where it always did, the value of the content. It has launched a freemium video product in the Monitor Breakfasts, video recordings of weekly meetings between Washington figures and journalists. But unlike other online video, full video of the Monitor Breakfasts will run $14.95 a month or $99.95 a year. Highlights of …

Five years of YouTube adds up to a pile of keyboard-playing cats, wannabe singing stars, and self-serving politician posts. Not to mention all of those three-year-olds thwapping Dad in the crotch with plastic waffle bats. Ouch. A lot can be said about YouTube's cultural implications, from insights about the supposed democratization of media to our rampant exhibitionism. But I think that on the basic level of communications history YouTube at the very least helped us treat video in much the same way we used text and images for decades, as a kind of media reflex rather than a specialized form …

Can you blame the newly installed Team Obama for wanting to channel some of the slick dramedy of the classic West Wing TV series? After all, don't you think most of them came of political age as the NBC political series was at its zenith. You have to imagine that as a deputy press secretary and senior advisors are doing their walk-and-talks down the White House halls more than once they flashed to just that right scene when Toby and C.J. or Josh and Sam were doing the same thing. Check the video shelves of any Obama staffer and I …

Don't blame me for mixing my metaphors. It's this damned platform war. It started as an uncomfortable divorce in Steve Job's weird little missive about why he and Adobe grew apart. But the Apple vs. Adobe squabble has broken out into a kind of gang warfare this week where neighborhoods seem to be taking sides. Straight from the front lines (in this case the blogosphere) here are the latest troop movements, as this whole debate takes on new metaphors and heads straight into true weirdness.

Because I write about media and advertising, all of my acquaintances seem to think I am personally responsible for their many frustration with online ad units. At the very least, they think I should be able to do something about it. "Dad, make them stop sending me Viagra ads, and tell them I am not really interested in penis enlargement," my teen daughter whines. My partner sends me detailed notes by email about how an oversized push down unit on her favorite woman's site repositions all the content on the page and then retracts it all back again when the …

There are only a handful of branded entertainment series that can claim to reach a "second season," or even aspire to. Ikea's "Easy to Assemble," and Topps' "Back on Topps" come to mind. But over at the teen-focused AlloyTV the LG sponsored "Haute & Bothered" not only launches a second 11-episode set of episode cycle yesterday but even filled the interregnum with mockumentary teasers about what the characters were doing between seasons. Even more interesting is that it is a rare case of branded entertainment that actually has to undersell its own product.

Thomson Reuters is getting into the financial news video business, because, well, apparently there isn't enough of the stuff to go around. Wall Street Journal reports that the new Reuters Insider offering has a special mission to counteract cable's tendency to make even business news as much about entertainment as information. "This is about turning video into actionable information," Devin Wenig, chief executive of Thomson Reuters told WSJ. No screaming Jim Cramers here, we guess. No, wait. CNBC is actually one of the content partners.

Serialized viral video campaigns run the risk of overstaying their Web welcome. There is a tendency to drive a good idea into the ground when distribution and media costs are negligible. This is the down side of digital media technology no one wants to talk about. It is the home video effect. At least when film cost an arm and a leg to buy and process, there were some kinds of natural limits. I will leave it to some smarter cultural analyst to figure this one out. But it seems to me that we are at the moment when the …

A curious bit of data emerged from yesterday's study of Q1 2010 video metrics from Brightcove and TubeMogul. Twitter referrals to videos on every major category of destination resulted in longer viewing times than any other traffic source. A Twitter referral to a music video averaged a 2:33 viewing time compared to 2:01 of time spent by people coming from Google. Tweets drove viewing sessions of 1:52 on broadcast locations, but traffic coming from Facebook, Bing and Google were all in the 1:37 to 1:38 range. The exception to this rule was Tweets landing on newspaper sites, where Yahoo customers …