The use of celebrities is one of the most effective creative approaches that a brand can take in branded video, television or print. But what happens when the definition of celebrity drastically changes? That's a challenge brands will face as Generation Z becomes a prime consumer market. A recent study from Variety found that American teenagers are more enthralled with YouTube stars than they are the biggest names in the more established entertainment industry.

Marketers are keen to move deeper into cross-channel marketing, but they also want more from their campaigns. Namely, they want to better understand the impact of each medium and the path to purchase, according to a report from eMarketer drawing on a survey by the National Advertisers and Forrester Consulting of U.S advertisers. The report also stated that cross-device marketing is the topic that marketers are most eager to learn more about this year.

Programmatic advertising has gotten a lot of press recently. Many companies in the category are getting funded by VCs, and one has even become publicly traded. There are aspects of programmatic buying that are compelling, but many pitfalls exist, especially when it involves video programmatic buying in open exchanges.

It's often said that content is king and distribution is queen, but platitudes are a "moral without a fable." That's because relevance is actually king. Consider that there are now over 188 million unique monthly viewers for online video in the U.S. alone. Not every viewer is appropriate for your brand, and your message isn't relevant to everyone. It's important to define your audience, position ads accordingly, and to plan an effective distribution strategy.

Everybody knows that you can learn as much from young people as you can teach them, and these days, maybe even more. That's often true at least in my field, which is audience research. I'll give you an example: You read everywhere about the growth of online video. But hearing directly from recent college graduates about their perspective on how they want to consume video content is priceless.

While not as flashy as the Super Bowl, World Cup, or Holiday, the back-to-school season is important for many brands. And one of the most prolific advertisers during the back-to-school season is Foot Locker. Last year, Foot Locker released six campaigns in August to capitalize on back-to-school shopping. This month alone, it has already released three campaigns with multiple assets, and it doesn't look like it's slowing down.

Buyers and sellers of online video advertising have been expanding the scope of T/V (Television/Video) ad messaging from the "click-to-play" constraints of pre-roll and mid-roll "instream" formats to "outstream" formats that run within non-video environments in either an "auto-play" or "view-to-play" manner. Things have been changing rapidly in the mobile video sector as mobile publishers and tech providers look to bring these newer online video formats into the mobile ecosystem.

The Internet is now ahead of TV, and it shows no signs of stopping its growth. For the first time, the number of broadband customers exceeded the number of cable subscribers.

Marketers are starting to look ahead to Generation Z, a young generation almost the nothing like the one that came before it. Gen Z includes those born after 1995 (some say 2000s), which accounts for 2 billion people worldwide. They grew up in a post-9/11 world, which has made them less optimistic than Millennials. Also, they grew up amid a recession, which has made them more frugal and conservative than Millennials. Gen Z is very socially aware and vocal about its ambition to change the world now, through volunteering -- and in the future, through their jobs.

Many consumers visit brand Web sites on the hunt for videos, but brands don't often offer enough video content to satisfy the demand. Consumers want video to help make purchase decisions, and 59% of consumers specifically say they're "likely to watch video when visiting a brand web site," according to a study of more than 1.000 consumers and more than 500 marketers from Levels Beyond, a video software company and content inventory platform.