Stop me if you've heard this one: content is king. The problem is, in case you haven't noticed, monarchies aren't exactly in vogue these days, and one could argue that social is the democracy and distribution/aggregation is the republic.

Advertiser spending for online video has come to a screeching halt. Businesses believe that ROI assessment tools are unreliable and advertisers are skeptical of any new metrics have been recently introduced. This grudge towards ad metrics may or may not be valid, but one new metric bucks the traditional trend of using cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM) to measure digital video (and TV)-take it a step further to cost-per-view (CPV).

In an earlier article, I talked about why the nomenclature for GoogleTV and AppleTV is ill-conceived, and why Google and Apple are doing the marketing of these products a disservice. At the same time, the opportunity to bring Internet and digital media to the largest screen in the home is immense. The nomenclature, the product development and marketing approaches demonstrate that neither company has qualified this opportunity sufficiently.

On May 9, 1961 FCC Chairman Newton N. Minow, an appointee of President Kennedy's administration, delivered his historic speech to the National Association of Broadcasters in Washington, DC. The speech is best known for two words he uttered in reference to the programming found on TV stations nationwide: vast wasteland. The term became a cultural touchpoint for critics of television, and remains so to this day.

I'm often asked to offer predictions about what the online video landscape will look like several years from now, which I always respectfully decline to do. Our industry is so dynamic, with new players emerging daily, it's relatively impossible to offer meaningful forecasts more than 12-18 months away. However, a smart colleague recently challenged me to use this space to do just that, in light of the increasing ubiquity of video across multiple devices and the resulting fragmentation of audiences. Perhaps the time is now right to look at the progress we've made as an industry over the last six …

"Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them," are famous words from Shakespeare. The same can be said for companies. The company I am referring to is Netflix. It has achieved greatness. I have been a loyal customer for longer than I can remember and I have only good things to say about the service. I have not, for a single day, lamented the demise of Blockbuster. Further, the company's proactive shift from DVDs to streaming will go down in business annals as an exemplary case study of how to boldly cannibalize your core …

Most online marketers are aware of the value of online video to promote services and products. Whether used to as an online commercial, product education, or to provide online support in order to reduce customer service calls, online video is an exploding and very useful solution. But the question is, how can you make an effective online video?

Brand marketers are increasingly in need of solid information on performance expectations for their next big video ad campaigns. ROI demands by management, coupled with rising production costs and escalating media costs, require solid research before a campaign launches. Three brands (we'll keep them general for purposes of this article) have been party to the creation of a totally new approach to satisfy this need for video research: crowdsourced video storyboards.

Given a choice, the largest marketers want to spend a lot more money online and around video than they currently do, Still, all factors being equal, they would choose to advertise alongside content from Traditional Media Companies (TMCs) -- not just networks (NBC, FOX, ABC and CBS) -- but cable companies too (ESPN, VH1, etc) -- content creators that I've long categorized as "super premium" content providers. These companies happen to fear the cannibalization of offline revenues, the proverbial trading of analog dollars for online change, be it pennies, nickels, dimes or quarters (in every sense of the word, there …

While we all have grown immensely over the past year, online and mobile video is still Precambrian: an underdeveloped, but now sizable medium in its own right. If we are going to take our act to the next level soon, there are six actions that should take priority to ready ourselves and the medium for major new investment from marketers.