When you watch -- or buy advertising -- in a "TV online" site, you know what you're getting. Online TV, on the other hand, is the homegrown content of the Internet, and it comes with a different set of baggage.

This year's World Cup has seen a huge number of campaigns featuring celebrities. Of the more than World Cup 50 campaigns analyzed by Visible Measures to date, 55% of them have famous faces. The majority of those campaigns star players participating in the tournament. But does it matter which famous athletes these brands use to star in their campaigns? Does one athlete generate more traction than another? Which World Cup player is also a viral video superstar?

Cross-screen marketing has officially become an imperative method for efficiently reaching the target audience -- it's on the plan. But parity in measurement across screens continues to be somewhat of a hurdle to fully opening the opportunity. With the growing adoption of the IAB's Video Player Ad-Serving Interface Definition (VPAID), the door to uniform cross-screen measurement will be unlocked, giving marketers a familiar language with which to understand similarities and differences in the ways consumers engage with ads from platform to platform. This measure allows advertisers to efficiently evaluate and optimize campaigns across the board.

Many video campaigns are executed backwards. More often than not, agencies drop their creative assets in the laps of planners, and the strategic thinking that went into developing them fails to be passed through. As beautiful and well conceived as the creative might be, execution is often determined more by specific channel-spend allocation than by audience. With the division of budgets and the need to "check the box" on every channel, too often asset distribution is carved up before the content -- and the specific audience -- is finally confirmed. In the process, planners adopt a shoot-and-point mentality -- a …

Consider that the total 2010 World Cup audience was roughly 3.2 billion, and it's evident that the reach and popularity of the event is that of monstrous proportions. Consider that this year's audience is set to surpass that of 2010's, and the presence of technology that was previously unavailable, and the 2014 World Cup is looking to be a historic "game-changer," teeing up a variety of challenges and opportunities for advertisers. So with 46% of U.S. viewers planning to watch the tournament on multiple devices, how can advertisers capitalize on this unique, massive event? Here are a few tips for …

A just-released study from Videology finds that more than 90% of marketers buy online video ads the same way they buy TV -- via CPMs. Even with real-time bidding options, brands are still leaning on guaranteed CPMs. That insight comes from an analysis of 2.4 billion programmatic video ads served by Videology in the first quarter.

YouTube plays a critical role in many digital content strategies, but the video site and platform has disadvantages that publishers need to consider. Although YouTube offers publishers the opportunity to easily reach scalable audiences worldwide, its lack of transparency and the amount of control it has over a publisher's intellectual property are worth discussion.

Several weeks ago, Ubisoft released a campaign for its upcoming video game title, Watch Dogs. In the campaign, "Amazing Street Hack," Ubisoft set up a fake store that offers 15-minute smartphone repairs. Caught on hidden camera, the customers are told when their phones are returned to them that they've been given a special app that can hack into the local electrical system. When one trick -- switching the traffic light -- goes awry and results in a crash, the police arrive and corner the smartphone owner. Don't worry, before Miranda rights are read, Ubisoft does the big reveal. To date, …

Not only are smartphones and tablets far outselling computers and TVs, they also have become the most used and viewed medium in many countries, including the United States, Canada, Mexico, China, Japan, and Germany, according to the 2014 Internet Trends report from Mary Meeker with noted venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers. Mobile viewing of online video has doubled in the last year and now comprises 22% of online video, according to Ooyala numbers in the report.

ABC's announcement last month that it would be rolling out a programmatic video solution, aided by tools and data developed by Freewheel, was notable for many reasons. I took most notice of the fact that it would bring to life something many advertisers have only dreamed of: using the same data employed for other digital advertising to purchase inventory affiliated with a traditional television network. But it was also notable for what it is not: ABC was very clear that it would not include real-time bidding or open exchanges at this time (or possibly at all) on its programmatic platform. …