Online video, branding and social media have become inextricably linked. Facebook and Twitter are among the first places online video viewers hear about a new video, and traffic referred to videos from those sources is often the most engaged of a brand's video viewers. Online video technology provider Brightcove recently released a report analyzing trends in the first two quarters of 2011, underscoring just how vital social media is for discovery and interest in a video whether from a broadcaster, a news source or a brand.

The release of the Kindle Fire this week may provide more fuel for the online video business than the book business. To be sure, eBooks are flourishing and many publishers are reporting robust increases in the digital book business. But the Kindle Fire and the soon-to-be-released competitor from Barnes & Noble, in its newest tablet, are both banking on video to boost sales. Why? Because tablet users like to watch video on the devices.

An online video buy may soon include connected TVs as a de rigueur portion of the campaign. Online video network Tremor Video is the latest online video network to expand deeper into connected TVs, and has added a series of Internet TV partners to its network of publishers. Tremor's move to include connected TVs as part of its advertising proposition follows on the heels of YuMe's recent deal with LG to run Toyota ads. Similarly, entertainment discovery service Rovi has been powering ads on connected TVs from Sony and Samsung.

Remember that time we talked about the challenges in measuring ROI in online video? (Just two weeks ago!) And how a lot of media buyers had said it's hard to measure the return on online video spending? Well, it seems the metric online video advertisers most want is a relatively simple one to procure and it's the completion rate. When it comes to online video, brands want to know if the consumer actually watched the ad all the way through.

With Americans watching upwards of 40 billion videos online each month and rising, how do you even find anything anymore? Discovery is becoming a huge issue and is regularly cited by advertisers, agencies and programmers as one of the biggest challenges facing the online video business. It's simply getting harder to find stuff. Right now, there are several issues making discovery even more complex, explained Will Richmond, analyst with VideoNuze, who led a webinar on the topic last week. Online video usage is fragmented, multiple devices are proliferating and traditional discovery methods are coming up short in the online video …

With programming geared for the technophiles and gadget hounds of the world, online TV network Revision3 has always attracted an early adopter audience. Now, that audience is watching Revision3 shows all over the place, validating the programming theory, "if you build it, they will come." Revision3 saw a 75% increase in content views on over-the-top devices so far this year, according to a white paper it recently released. The network studied viewership patterns for its content across devices such as Roku, Apple TV, Sony PS3, Microsoft XBox, Google TV, Windows Media Center, as well as smartphones and mobile devices.

Whether consumers need or want another video site is highly debatable, but that's not stopping telecom provider Frontier Communications from launching a new video library that boasts 700,000 titles via deals with Hulu, Amazon and other content providers. The new site, TumTiki, is slated to debut today and is effectively operating as an affiliate site pulling content from other aggregators. As such, it's not a competitor to the Hulus, Amazons and Netflixes of the world, but rather another hook into them and another way for many of those sites to make money.

I love YouTube. Fine, I confessed. Does that make me a biased journalist? If so, I don't care. Some days, I just leave a YouTube window open all day and search for clips from Broadway musicals, being a musical theater phile. (So, as a public service announcement, if you ever want to get on my good side, send me Youtube clips of musicals or musical spoofs. Seriously. I LOVE that stuff.) That being said, I don't entirely GET this new channels initiative. Sure, the basics are YouTube is pouring $100 million into 100 new channels as part of its push …

Fresh on the heels of Toyota's new media news that it'll be running Camry spots in connected TVs from LG, entertainment discovery service Rovi plans to release new insights next week on the high levels of interaction it's tracking for Internet TV ads. In sharing a sneak peek of its study into engagement with ads on connected TVs, Rovi said about 80% of platform users surveyed noticed the presence of ads on connected TVs, and about one-third of those who noticed the ads clicked on them.

It should come as a surprise to just about no one that online video viewers are more apt to sit through the commercials in live online content compared to on-demand online content. That's one of the findings from a recent report from video advertising technology company, Auditude . But what is noteworthy from the study is the willingness of consumers to sit through mid-rolls. Let's dive into the numbers and then look at what they mean for brands.