Consumer usage of video is increasing at an astonishing rate. Cisco has estimated that video will increase from 30% of Internet traffic in 2010 to 90% by 2013. Online retailers are already using video, and service companies, manufacturing, and many others are also hopping on board. The scope of businesses that employ video and the different uses for video are expanding.

Raise your hand if you're confused about the number of "market leaders" in the industry now. Everywhere you look, someone is claiming to be better than the rest, but the truth is: "There can't be six or seven category leaders," argues Will Margiloff, chief executive officer of Ignition One, the digital marketing technology unit of Japanese ad agency Dentsu, adding: "it's just not a big enough market for all the money invested."

I don't believe you can make a "viral video." There. I said it. However, you can game the system. In a media landscape where earned media continues to gain greater and greater importance, we find ourselves consulting brands on analytical ways to judge a qualitative product. A way to judge propensity. And, sometimes, you can do it by analyzing 10 factors...

A recent CTAM study, "Roadmap to Video Apps (What Makes Viewers APPY?)" teaches us that the best things in life are still free. When rating the attributes of video applications, like YouTube, Hulu or iTunes for smartphones and tablets, 63% of respondents said that "free or low subscription rates" is the most important attribute for a video application. Given this economy, that is not surprising. However, what is surprising is that regardless of mobile device, roughly 75% of video app users are most commonly accessing the apps while in the home. And consumers say they are open to advertisements on …

This week I took a "snapshot" of how TV broadcast networks are commercializing their content for two different platforms of digital delivery: 1) Online (via Hulu) and 2) Cable System-delivered Video-On-Demand/VOD (via Time-Warner Cable in Brooklyn, NY). I selected a single prime-time, half-hour comedy program from each network that ran in the last 10 days on both platforms. My measurements focus on ads in a traditional form, whether it is a purchased ad or a promo for a same/sister-network program. Here's what I found:

Marketers are exceptional at messaging during campaigns. They start with owned media channels (brand websites, Facebook pages, YouTube channels, etc.), amplify with paid media, and then drive towards earned media engagement. But there is still that time in between marketing campaigns where a rich vein of untapped opportunity exists for a brand. Think of owned media as a content network -- a TV network, if you will -- where the audience is always ready to consume content if the value proposition is there.

While YouTube continues its dominance of online video, away from the popular site are seeing more unfilled demand than ever for quality video inventory. If you didn't know any better, you'd think that YouTube was the 1% of online video, while the rest of the world represented the 99%.

For those of us who live and breathe online video advertising, it's been really interesting to see which advertisers and industry sectors have been fastest to include the channel in their media plans. The recent annoucement from Yahoo and ABC News may be just the kick in the pants more cautious advertisers need to really believe the potential of digital video.

Online video is going to be just like TV. We all hear that at conferences; we all read it in the trades. It has been positioned as a good thing. After all, the creative components of online video open the same emotional and active option that a TV spot does. And it does present new opportunities in terms of scale. It is here, however, that online video reaches the point where TV comparisons are a bad thing. In fact, online video is running headlong into a TV problem. Here's why.

In the 1956 classic film "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," Dr. Miles Bennell, portrayed by the late Kevin McCarthy, spends most of the film warning of "pod people" -- aliens taking over the identities of their human hosts. The movie scared the crap out of me as a child. Checking under the bed for "pods" became a nighttime ritual for a long while. Thankfully, they never showed up. Circa 2011, I wouldn't mind a little "pod people" invasion, at least when it comes to digital video.