Stop me if you have heard this from me before. Video is the new text. Well, too late now. I said it again. One of the fundamental shifts in media consumption in the last few decades has been towards video-centricity. While text (and to a lesser degree still images) were the primary vehicle for most news and information, not video is becoming the preferred mode of media consumption From b2b news sites to every major print brand, the expectation of a video experience somewhere in the mix is there. And almost everyone seems to be producing video of some sort. …

At this evening's OMMA Awards Hitviews' founder Walter Sabo will be hoping to see his project in advertising via viral video celebrity pay off with industry recognition of a novel model. Nominated in the Viral Video category, his campaign for Fox's Glee TV series last year engaged some of the top YouTube personalities to promote the show in their own way. While that approach has been going on all year in a number of ad hoc efforts, Sabo started Hitviews as a way to systematize the process of matching brand marketers with just the right video celebrities for any …

One of the weird consequences of post-mass media is that we can now live in an ideologically pure media bubble of our own on just about any medium. Partisan news reporting is available 24/7 now, on cable, on the Web and on mobile extensions of both on your phone. Play your cards right and keep that bubble intact and you may never have to see a challenging point of view again. But stray onto a video news aggregator and you never know what might happen. All of a sudden a right-wing wingnut may find himself confronted by a Jon Stewart …

Monetization of online video has been an elusive goal for many publishers over the years. But if you really want to get close to the cash (and this may be as close to monetization as some startups will get) then you may try a unique government-funded set of video podcasts on, well, money. See your tax dollars at work at NewMoney.gov where an ongoing series of video spots illustrates and explains the process of creating the next generation of U.S. currency.

Even in the seemingly bottomless pool of display inventory, behavioral targeting technologies traditionally have had to contend with scale issues. Sure you can segment audiences based on previous browsing histories into ever more tightly defined targets, but are you ending up with an audience size worth buying? Pull back on some of the segment definitions enough to get a usable audience and decent pool of inventory it doesn't take months to serve and you may have watered down your target beyond the point of increased effectiveness. And so 'BT' is even harder to deploy in the video environment where the …

From the time streaming media became a serious business for advertising, ad tech companies and the more forward-thinking guys at creative agencies lamented the ubiquitous repurposed 15 and 30. Give us creative that fits the medium, the screen, the attention span and the content size of online video experience, they said. And yet any cursory look at most major media sites demonstrates that the pre-roll is dominated by familiar TV spots. Now Dynamic Logic adds to the argument with research showing that repurposed TV ads do indeed raise brand awareness more effectively than other kinds of online ads. Perhaps that …

This is going to be a big week for what I have been calling (and no one has stopped me so far) "second screening" with the iPad. That is, we are getting to test two TV network apps for the Apple tablet that work in synch with live TV programming. The higher profile MyGeneration app from ABC and Nielsen will use audio cues from the program itself to activate interactive elements on the iPad. But we won't get to try that out until later this week when the program premieres. A second screen app that enjoyed less coverage but may …

A decade ago people complained about it, but now product placement has become such a predictable part of the American media experience that brand marketers can both leverage and lampoon it at the same time. Breath freshener Binaca is trying to revive its old brand by soliciting online filmmakers to insert the product into classic film scenes.

Why bother trying to win the viral ad video lottery with an effort that is most likely to gather a few thousand YouTube views when there are plenty of consistent viral winners available to be leveraged? That was one of Revision3 CEO Jim Louderback's points when I spoke to him last week on the topic of viral success. Jim tossed a firecracker into the hype-fest over viral ads that seems to have come out of the famous Old Spice Responses series over the summer. Jim actually isn't opposed to all attempts at viral success. "You can do it. It just …

Just in case there wasn't enough brand recognition in pairing AMEX with John Legend, an upcoming performance streamed live on YouTube is a flash mob of celebrity. On September 23 John Legend and The Roots will perform at Terminal 5 In New York. The event will leverage YouTube's recently introduced live streaming platform and is part of an American Express/YouTube/VEVO project to run five such live events to feature both the artists and the potential of the platform. High profile directors are being enlisted in the effort, so no less a master than Spike Lee will oversee the live stream …