Many companies are delivering technology that helps address key challenges faced by publishers and advertisers, while some are creating additional friction and inefficiency. Understanding the basic process of how a publisher "calls" an advertiser illuminates the complexity of the entire video system, highlighting a few simple strategies that can improve performance for publishers -- and for the marketplace overall.

Audiences chose to watch branded video more than 2.9 billion times in Q3 2014, due primarily to the continued global interest in World Cup campaigns and growing levels of activity from smartphone brands in September. According to Visible Measures analysis, views increased 3% over Q2, when World Cup mania was at its peak. This means that viewership of branded video was at the highest rate it has ever been to date in Q3 2014.

In Steven Spielberg's 2002 film "Minority Report," a pre couch-jumping Tom Cruise plays a hero cop in a dystopian 2054 America. One of the more memorable details in the film (perhaps owing to its chilling implications) was the presence of retina-scanning billboards that beam custom-tailored ads directly into one's skull. (You can watch the scene here.) If you know anything about near-field communication, though, you probably won't be surprised to learn that this technology, albeit in a slightly less Orwellian form, has hit the streets 40 years earlier than Spielberg predicted. All of this is to say that as science …

Online video viewing is on the rise, and so are online video dollars. Okay, fine, that's not rocket science to connect the two. Even so, a handful of new research reports point to a sustained surge in the online video ad market that's being fueled by consumer reliance on mobile devices, both smartphones and tablets.

With midterm elections this week, reports of campaigns spending record-breaking amounts on political advertising are all over the news. And while TV is definitely at the heart of this massive industry, the rise of online video begs the question: Are political advertisers exploiting the digital medium to their best advantage?