As advertisers, we often wonder where exactly all those impressions are going when we do a placement and more importantly, are people really seeing them. Now, YuMe is giving us answers to those questions with their new video ad Placement Quality Index, announced today . The new YuMe Placement Quality Index (PQI) is a proprietary algorithm that monitors and identifies the optimal placement of video ads on digital properties

Last year, brands were still spending more money on regional newspaper advertising and classified press ads than on digital display ads like banners, video and social. Given that the internet as a whole has cut a swath through other media to become the UK’s biggest advertising channel, this seems fairly unbelievable. On closer inspection, however, perhaps not

Here's something that we've needed in online video advertising analytics for a long time, the ability for the advertiser to know whether or not their ads are being played on user-initiation or automatically upon page load. Good old SpotXchange ('sup Otto!) have announced that they've got this cool new feature to increase transparency and help brand advertisers get a better grip on their ad spends.

I recently got some time with SundaySky's President and Chief Revenue Officer, Jim Dicso, to talk about their SmartVideo product which offers real-time personalized video to better engage and connect with consumers.

When I was at CES I was lucky enough to sit down with the crew from Starlight Runner who are doing great things in 'transmedia' campaigns to help brands achieve a wider reach for their products and projects. While we didn't chat much about work in Vegas it did lay some groundwork so that we could sit down and talk about how and why a brand should look at a transmedia approach to marketing and more importantly, the online video role in such a campaign.

On a recent trip to LA, I had a chance to talk to Sarah Penna, the co-founder of Big Frame. Big Frame is a YouTube management company, working with online video talent to grow their careers. They have over 30 channels, collectively bringing in an average of 87 million video views each month.

Last month I shared part of my conversation with Jim Louderback . We covered a great number of video-related topics that day, including the comparison of the online video marketplace to cow paths (trust me, it makes total sense once you hear it) and how we still haven't quite found the direct route to what new media is going to become.

In my recent Hulu AdZone article I talked about how ads online needed to step back from the "here's the brand - now here's the call to action" format and make their ads more entertaining, like companies do during the Super Bowl. For a long time I've also been saying that TV advertisers need to take a more interactive approach to their ads, and Shazam helped do just that this year. It's not complete interactivity, but it will have to do until everyone has a connected TV.

Here's a tremendous way to get your ad money's worth: stick two products into one ad and continue the insane branded insanity of some of the most popular commercials in the world.

There have been several reports talking about increased effectiveness of ad campaigns when they go cross platform. Some have included TV, print and other media as well as online.