It was a proud moment for the online video industry when Brightcove (or should I say BCOV) made its public debut on the NASDAQ at $14.50 a share last month. The IPO and subsequent debut reinforced not only the value and growth potential of online video, but drew rapt attention from investors and venture capitalists. For me, and others who are as focused on defining the industry as growing their customer base, the spotlight on the category can't be bright enough.

I wish every brand had a video with a million views. Why? Because they'd see the video was successful because it didn't blatantly market the company's products or services. Then the company would loosen up restrictions on videos with a goal of high views -- and would use a metric other than views for targeted videos.

I had the pleasure to spend the weekend in Puerto Rico with Andy Plesser from Beet.tv and an amazing crew of folks who took a tiny plane to Vieques to talk about journalism and the future of the video industry. The event name was BeetRetreat (pictures by Phil Frank, or check the summary page).

According to a recent report from AAAA Media Mind, mobile ads reach "one out of every three consumers." Therefore, the key for most industry insiders is not if mobile video advertising is the best strategy for their clients, but rather how to effectively engage consumers in a way that translates into revenue and sales growth.

If your business model requires the largest marketers shifting the bulk of their marketing budgets online, you might need to go back to the drawing board. Some companies are premised on the fact that traditional media companies (and thus, possibly, the big marketers) won't embrace emerging platforms in quite the way forecasts suggest.

March Madness is, and will continue to be, a major online advertising event, which is good news for digital marketers constantly searching for the hard-to-find "premium and exclusive video content." But online sports coverage doesn't begin and end in March, nor is it confined to the live streaming of high-profile sporting events. Why is it that authentic sports video, while constantly available online, is never at the crux of the "premium" content discussion for digital marketers?

Content creators love to brag about how their work is "platform-agnostic." It means that their video content is free to roam onto any platform, be it TV, mobile, PC, tablet, etc. This is generally seen as a positive because even just a few years ago, getting video content onto more than just its original platform was in itself an achievement. But a recent conversation changed my view of platform-agnostic -- forever. The crux of the conversation was this: Brands and content creators shouldn't focus on being platform-agnostic; they need to focus on becoming platform-committed.

By suing Facebook for patent infringement, Yahoo is either seeking a cash settlement or some form of equity in pre-IPO Facebook, as it did in Google by way of the AltaVista patents it inherited when it bought Overture (who'd acquired AltaVista). Seeing how Microsoft's $45 billion offer is a thing of the past, and Yahoo revenues have fallen from $7 billion to $5 billion from 2008 to 2011, maybe new CEO Scott Thompson's lawsuit is a veiled attempt to force Facebook to ultimately buy Yahoo

Every week the news blog The Daily Beast pulls together the top ten "buzziest" videos, representing a cross-section of the most viral and most viewed clips and commercials on the Internet. You might think that the bizarre and the Kardashians get the most buzz -- but no. For the last week I looked at while writing this, political videos took five out of 10 Daily Beast spots.

"2012 is the year of Web-based, episodic video content." That's been the buzz for who knows how long now. We've all heard it, and for the most part, we've all pretty much accepted it as true. But are we even really sure we know what that means?