As a video ad industry executive, I am often asked to provide perspective on two topics: new innovative video ad products, and what Google is doing. These topics have been combined recently with a slew of questions about Google's TrueView ad unit for YouTube and its value for advertisers.

Amazon's recently announced deal with Epix made headlines across the digital blogosphere and news outlets for doubling Amazon's library with premium content from Paramount, Lionsgate, and MGM (the companies that make up Epix). While most commented on the threat this deal poses to competitor Netflix (who until recently had exclusive rights to Epix content), the macro trend that this news forecasts is equally worth exploring.

The past year has seen a revolutionary advance in techniques and the participants in a process that has several names: RTB (Real Time Bidding/Buying), Media Exchanges, Ad Exchanges, Media Trading. Digital RTB Exchanges are already handling trillions of buy/sell transactions monthly across online display, mobile (tablet, smartphone) and OTT T/V (Over-The-Top or non-cable/satellite) digital platforms. This is an unprecedented level of efficient and optimized buying for both sellers and buyers. The traditional, time-consuming direct selling/buying process is joined and supplemented by this new kind of "stock exchange" for targeted/addressable media impressions.

This year, I've tried to determine whether there's any fundamental, material difference between ad networks targeting video game content vs. video content.

Congratulations, brands: You are now broadcasters, Rather than just passive receptacles of consumer appreciation, you are now obligated to produce and distribute content to audiences that "like" or "fan" you. Marketers must invest in social media campaigns that leverage video as a key aspect of their social strategy. Once they do, they'll realize that video solves the social media content problem, and social solves the video distribution issue.

n a stark and sun-filled room with glass walls, a lone media buyer with sharp features and blue hair, wearing wrap-around glasses and a shiny grey jumpsuit, sits in front of a large screen manipulating rows of data and images with his fingertips (or perhaps just with his eyes). The system in front of him is optimizing his brand's video campaigns, getting him the best price and best audience for each view of each ad. These video ads are rendering across multiple screens, devices and hologram-like illusions that haven't been invented yet.

There's a fast-emerging trend we are seeing as a producer of videos for both major brands and agencies: the emergence of "stories" as the next big vehicle for brand communication. At least a dozen of our clients have undertaken projects to start producing human-interest stories via video to promote their brands, so it bears a closer look for anyone in the video and broader marketing industries:

Quality. Scale. Pick one. Bet you can't pick both. Can you? If you can find a way to deliver those two things to advertisers, investors will reward you amply. As a producer of content, I know the quality vs. scale conundrum all too well.

Video, like all other forms of online advertising, changes rapidly. While viewers are consuming more than 36 billion videos a month and significantly growing the market's available supply, we have not yet reached a buy-side evaluation standard. Should advertisers stick to the traditional and now standard cost-per-thousand (CPM) pricing model? Or should they try a different approach, one that replicates TV or even takes advantage of the inherent "lean-forward" features of online video?

Imagine a world where 7 billion people, the world's population, could afford a weekly session when they confront and talk. Wow. Then came talktala, a New York-based startup aimed at enabling people to "confront" in a scalable and, most important, an affordable way. Thousands of therapists are already signed up, ready to go online, and there are even more people on the other side looking for a session.