Given how long the industry has been around, I was surprised that a leading digital advertising event recently celebrated various long-form online video ad executions without even mentioning pre-roll. This is evidence that many advertisers still think of "online video ads" as one- to five-minute videos that are perfect for posting on YouTube or a brand's Facebook page, in hopes that it will go viral and generate millions of tweets and Facebook "likes" from users. While these "video ads" could be very successful as a viral video, they wouldn't be very useful as an advertisement, since they are much too …

In the mid-2000s, Kevin Rose helped launch two companies, Digg and Revision3, with the former being the quintessential web 2.0 aggregator, and the latter being a more traditional content producer, albeit intent on disrupting the cable industry. As Digg earned the headlines, Revision3 -- like all content companies, ahem -- remained off-the-radar, building distribution, good will and revenues. Last week, the Washington Post acq-hired the Digg team, while Discovery Communication acquired Revision3 for $30 million.