It’s not so often we get to talk about AdWords here at ReelSEO, but I keep a keen eye on their blog because tidbits of fascinatingly shiny news pop up now and again….oooh shiny! Anyway, I just saw a post from yesterday that said they are switching up the way the bidding on Promoted Videos work on YouTube.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how quickly video is expanding online in terms of capabilities and implementation. I consult with a lot of small businesses, and when talk turns to online video, many of them are instantly skeptical. They’re not sure it’s a good path for their business, mostly because their experience with online video is typically limited to amateur viral clips and branded commercials from giant corporations.

Online video can be a lot of things. It can be entertainment, obviously, and that has been it’s primary purpose these last six years or so. But it’s flexing its muscle in recent years, showing how much power and creativity it can bring to help us rethink other traditional things like education, fine art, communication, or even historical record-keeping

The story behind Blinkx's acquisition of Burst Media.

Adap.tv has partnered up with Horizon Media on a “next generation video ad buying and campaign management system.” They are working together on integrating the Adap.tv for Advertisers with some new services that will give advertisers with diverse inventories spread across numerous sources and formats a better way to buy video ad placements. Adap.tv for Advertisers streamlines the process of working with multiple inventory sources, formats, devices and other time-consuming complexities.

While there’s plenty of evidence that brands are embracing online video as a new and powerful medium for advertising, the overwhelming majority of video ads are still created for television–that is to say, they’re created as a one-size-fits all solution. A brand makes a commercial, and we all see that same spot no matter who or where we are.

Facebook is slowly rolling out a new system that will give Facebook Credits to users who willingly view certain video ads–you might have read about it in Christopher’s Weekly News Reel article over the weekend. And now they have their first major brand on board to help test the system: ClickZ reports that Clorox will be one of the first brands to serve as guinea pigs. It sounds simple enough: viewers watch a video ad in its entirety, and they receive Facebook Credits in exchange , which they can use for Facebook Deals purchases or for upgrades to one of the many social video games like Cityville.

Nielsen recently reported that the number of TV’s owned in the U.S. has dropped due in part to younger consumers going without paid TV (cord-cutting). Online viewing may fill in the gap though, because the CW has found that viewers stay tuned for all the ads in its full-episode streaming online; plus YouTube offers some compelling new projections on economic models for online video ads.

In order to effectively use online video content, web video marketers need to invest in video search engine optimization (SEO) to reach viewers and benefit from social media sharing.

By 2015, YouTube predicts that 50 percent of all video advertising units will include a cost-per-view component.