Interactive overlays can often significantly increase the amount of time viewers spend with an ad and with the brand. That helps in particular when raising awareness for a cause, as Tremor Video learned in a recent campaign for hunger-relief organization Feeding America in which engagement with interactive pre-rolls far exceeded the average.

Ah, can you smell it in the air? It's summer partnerships, which can lead to fall mergers! The online video industry has been all cozy with each other lately (dare I say, there's some serious dating going on!), and the newest set of partners to cuddle up are real-time ad buying platform TubeMogul and interactive video technology firm Innovid.

Online video ad network AdExcite is betting interstitial video ads are more appealing to consumers than pre-roll ads and it's got some recent campaign data to back up that claim. AdExcite is hanging its hat on its "slider" type of video ad format that delivers short video ads next to text or other content on more than 1,000 websites, such as GotchaMovies.com, Examiner.com and others, collectively reaching more than 75 million uniques a month.

Google knows just a wee bit about display ads and a wee bit about video ads. But how do the two mediums play together?

Consumer packaged goods manufacturers are the largest category for online video advertising, but who exactly are the video viewers watching the ads served up by the CPG makers? Online ad technology firm Collective analyzed millions of video ad impressions and paired them with purchase data to develop six profiles of consumers watching online video and buying beauty, food and beverage products. This information can provide additional insights for CPG brands on where and how to reach their specific market online.

When planning a recent international trip with my daughter, I was faced with a first-world problem: should I download a season of "My Little Pony" to the Amazon Kindle Fire for her to watch on the ten-hour flight or opt for iTunes, then buy and synch to an iPod?

Online video advertising is a powerful tool to boost the reach and effectiveness of a TV campaign, according to a comScore report on cross-media marketing. If an advertiser allocates 90% of a campaign to TV and 10% to digital video, that mix can increase the reach by 5 percentage points and the effectiveness by 16 percentage points, comScore said.

Mobile is both its own beast and an increasingly important venue for video. You've seen all the reports on mobile video viewing increasing. Much of that increase comes from a growth in complementary TV viewing -- either in looking up videos related to TV content, or tuning into TV shows or clips. But the mobile viewing experience isn't always pleasant for consumers.

Consumer packaged goods are the biggest advertisers in online video, regularly accounting for about one-quarter to one-third of online video ad spend. But does the money actually work? Are consumers going to stores and buying more toothpaste, soap, cereal and so on?

Targeting is vital to the success of most Internet marketing campaigns. But marketers need to make sure they are targeting not just by demo, or age, or sex, or "intent to purchase." Daypart targeting is also a necessity in online video buys, especially given the growth in mobile consumption of video because mobile video habits fluctuate greatly throughout the day.