It's time to move video advertising out of the middle of the content stream, and right to the front of the interactive content activation experience. It's time to put the viewing of advertising in the hands of the user, just as we've done for content. It's time for a gateway unit that commands high CPMs from brand advertisers, is fully viewed and listened to through consumer activation, and allows users to opt out of in-stream interruptions by opting in to an advertiser message.

By most accounts, cord-cutting continued at the usual pace at pay-TV providers in the second quarter, but it didn't speed up. That's the conclusion of Wall Street firm MoffetNathanson. The researcher noted that pay-TV providers lost 757,000 subscribers in the second quarter, with a decline of 1.29 million over the last year. While that isn't necessarily news to sing about, the declines are steady as far as declines go. In short, cord-cutting has still not caused a mass exodus from multichannel providers.

Connected TV use has nearly doubled in the last year for the 18- to 49-year-old demo, according to a new report from Pivotal Researchreleased this week. The firm found that 8.5% of all TV usage in July was routed through connected TVs, such as via Roku, Apple TV and Chromecast. That's a big jump from the 4.9% usage rate from the year-ago period, and the 1.9% Pivotal reported in July 2014.

About two-thirds of Internet users around the world tune into either short-form or long-form video-on-demand on a regular basis. That's the finding of a new report from eMarketer, taking the temperature of global digital video. The verdict? Video still has long legs and lots of growth ahead, especially on mobile devices.

The world's largest sporting spectacle is upon us, and digital video advertisers are looking forward to seeing the rewards of the video ad campaigns they have been preparing for the last few months. Rightfully so. Due to the growing audience for online video, the 2016 Summer Olympics is on track to be the biggest Olympics for digital video advertising yet.

Many marketers have long held the assumption that branded content performs better than standard ad units. A just-released study from Nielsen bolsters this belief in the video arena. The research giant studied more than 100 pieces of branded content, such as online video series as well as product integrations within a TV show. Nielsen reports that brand recall and brand lift are usually higher with branded content than pre-roll ads. These findings can be helpful, especially as ad blocker use continues to rise.