Context is a topic often covered among advertisers. The goal of reaching an audience with a relevant message is age-old, and technology has allowed us to get better and better at it with targeting. Online video advertising spend is growing rapidly, and we've truly passed an inflection point at the level of relevance possible. What was rare or very expensive in the early days of online video is now commonplace, and the idea of context in online video advertising can take on many forms.

For many years, there was a perceived divide in advertising. Award-winning advertising was considered edgy, but definitely too artsy and out-there to win the hearts of the everyday consumer. The general wisdom was that while clients, like agencies, like awards, there were fewer brands willing to take a risk on this kind of work. Most brands seemingly would gravitate toward work that was safe, and maybe a little boring, but played to the broadest possible target. But as we've seen at Cannes over the last couple of years, there's no reason that award-winning, edgy work, can't also appeal to the …

The topic of auto-play versus click-to-play for online video is picking up steam again, especially with the proliferation of programmatic ad buying. It concerns me that auto-play video is evolving into the industry norm, as it ultimately damages the brands of publishers and marketers alike.

In a quest for better metrics, comScore is pitching a new measurement strategy called "total video." Given the shift to a multiscreen world where consumers watch video when they want and where they want, comScore outlined in a recently published white paper a "holistic" measurement approach. This strategy would take into account these new behaviors while tracking unduplicated audiences across screens, the research firm said.

Yesterday I ran across a sponsored advertorial piece that included the question "How do you calculate digital reach and brand impact from moving TV dollars to digital video?" I often think of myself as too sophisticated to "fall for" sponsored content, especially in the B2B publications where I am targeted, but this question was too intriguing to resist.

Last week Apple made some changes to its developer guidelines that will have an immediate impact on the mobile advertising industry, especially on vendors that offer "incentivized video ads." These companies have been offering video ads ostensibly as a way of helping developers make money and get their app discovered. They work by forcing users to watch a video ad on their smartphone in order to move to the next level of an in-app game, or to receive reward points or virtual goods. In some instances, after being required to click on the video ad, users find themselves on the …

Over the past several months there has been quite a bit of press coverage about video viewability, including two very in-depth articles in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. At the same time, lots of progress has been made by verification companies and ad networks to combat all kinds of video ad fraud, bot traffic and viewabilty issues. This is a giant measure of progress, and buyers in particular should feel very good about these advancements. In the shadow of all this tremendous progress and beyond this issue of whether or not the ads are being seen …

In May, we saw brands make a big splash with Mother's Day-branded content. Viewership of Mother's Day campaigns in 2014 reached nearly 40 million views, a 450% increase over the year prior. Brands applied a number of Super Bowl lessons to their Mother's Day content to make it a success. They pre-seeded content well in advance of the holiday, for one. They also took advantage of consumers' fondness for emotionally charged content and delivered sweet, tear-inducing tributes to moms. But brands have traditionally relied on humor, not emotion, in their Father's Day messaging. Would Father's Day advertisers be able to …

If media habits in the United States are anything like those across the pond, then pay-TV providers don't have much to worry about from cord-cutting. A new report from Deloitte indicates that multichannel video subscribers have a voracious appetite for content from a range of sources. This data may be useful for U.S. media strategists as they plan.

"Volvo: they're boxy but they're good." Dudley Moore's so-honest-it's-absurd ad campaign for Volvo in the movie "Crazy People" has been on my mind since the Digital Content NewFronts last month. The presentations exposed a trend that seems to be shaping not just digital content, but also brand voice and campaigns, emanating from social channels and expanding into all touchpoints. That trend is reality.