1. What’s the one big issue/law/attitude/restriction that you think is holding back the industry?

One attitude holding back the industry is a belief that the best content creators need to be paid upfront for the content they produce. Sometimes upfront payments are absolutely the right way, but often they are not. At blip.tv this week we sent out hundreds of thousands of dollars in payouts to independent content creators, based on advertising that ran on their shows. What’s nice about this is that it’s a meritocracy. For the most part, the shows with the greatest number of views receive the largest checks. And advertisers get a terrific value, too, because we can guarantee views for them rather than asking them to place bets on hits.

2. What industry buzzword do you never want to hear again?

Social media. But I use it occasionally. Is that bad?

3. If someone gave you $50 million to invest in a company in this space, which one would it be?

If I could invest in one company right now it would be FreeWheel. The company that figures out how best to serve, and target, video ads will do extraordinarily well. These guys are the closest to getting there. I’d also spend some money on Roku and Boxee if there were any left over. Watching digital content on the TV set is super-satisfying but also a pretty profound thing. It’s what transforms digital media into, quite simply, media.

4. What was the last video you didn’t make yourself that you liked enough to spread to others?

I am constantly sending my parents clips from Old Jews Telling Jokes. And then I’m grateful my grandmother hasn’t submitted a joke (yet).

5. WILDCARD QUESTION: You’re one of the most prominent female executives working in online video today. What’s one benefit and one drawback to that?

I’m a big believer in the importance of women founders supporting each other, and I love spending time with other female Internet founders (and wish there were more of us). One benefit is that people tend to remember meeting you. One drawback is that I think you’re held to a different standard. And I don’t think people expect you to be funny. So I sometimes say things that are meant to be jokes that are taken seriously. Then again, it might just be that I should work on being funnier.

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The PGA’s official definition for a transmedia narrative, as published on Deadline.com yesterday, is one that:

“…must consist of three (or more) narrative storylines existing within the same fictional universe on any of the following platforms: Film, Television, Short Film, Broadband, Publishing, Comics, Animation, Mobile, Special Venues, DVD/Blu-ray/CD-ROM, Narrative Commercial and Marketing rollouts, and other technologies that may or may not currently exist.”

According to PGA Director of Communications Chris Green, the omission of video games from that list is an oversight that will be amended shortly, and emphasized the guild’s interest in bringing in producers who fall into this category. “It is producing work and storytelling work that does utilize many of the skills traditionally associated with producing,” he said via phone. “[Transmedia] is important and it’s only going to get more important.”

The question is, though, what do people who now technically qualify for PGA membership think about this? I emailed around a little to see.

Miles Beckett of EQAL, which would be eligible thanks to projects like the Harper’s Island spin-off Harper’s Globe, thinks it’s a good thing “because it will formally recognize individuals who contribute to the ‘multi-platform’ components of an entertainment franchise.” He’s considering joining, but he needs “to look into the full requirements for membership… including the dues :).”

Writer Nina Bargial, who was the architect of the Streamy Award-nominated transmedia experience for Valemont, believes that her work on the Electric Farm project would make her eligible, and while she didn’t think the definition of a transmedia experience was perfect, she did appreciate that that “it recognizes our endeavors as an integral part of the experience. Plus, for freelancers (such as myself) it also means things like health benefits and pension.” She’s already a member of the WGA, but is considering applying.

No Mimes Media‘s Behnam Karbassi, who was involved with the transmedia campaign for Warner Bros’ The Dark Knight among others, pointed out that the PGA’s decision “solidifies ‘transmedia’ as the term to be applied to multi-platform storytelling (after much debate over the last few years), it acknowledges transmedia as a true addition to the production world, and it signals what many of us already believe, that transmedia storytelling is the future of entertainment.”

Karbassi is now definitely going to apply to the PGA, but his No Mimes partner Steve Peters isn’t so sure. For one thing, he’s concerned that “its definition seems to be pretty skewed toward franchising as opposed to ARG or transmedia entertainment experiences in the classic sense (if there can be such a thing),” though he hopes that will change in the future. For another thing, his official title at No Mimes is now Chief Designer, which means he doesn’t quite fit into the producer role, even though his duties incorporate producing tasks (as well as tasks that might be covered by the Writer’s or Director’s Guild). Peters hinted at the fact that a new guild might be necessary for the transmedia world, “another organization that would be focused on Transmedia from its inception.”

Damon Berger, director of digital marketing at 20th Century Fox, also wasn’t enthusiastic, mainly because he didn’t see the need. “Why do they need to call it something different than being a producer?” he said via phone. “You just happen to be doing the same job with something that incorporates new technology. To me it seems that there’s something missing in the idea that you’re a transmedia producer instead of just a co-producer.”

He was also not a fan of the definition, as it offered up so much gray area that “almost anyone can be considered a transmedia producer in the digital space,” including studio marketing teams. “It’s either going to be incredibly limiting or it’s going to open the floodgates for everyone who works on a project at a studio to become a part of this story universe,” he said.

In addition, he voiced his concern over the fact that giving transmedia producers a specific credit “almost feels like [they're] the B-team. I can’t tell if it’s a good thing or a bad thing.”

And he might have a point there. I asked the PGA’s Green about how a transmedia producer might be ranked in relation to a traditional producer, and he replied that “What a transmedia producer and a traditional producer do are separate things. I don’t want to say that they’re secondary, but a transmedia producer isn’t creating intellectual property, but instead expanding intellectual property across multiple platforms. Not to say that they’re not valuable and essential members of the team — I don’t want to set up opposition between transmedia producers and traditional producers — but they fulfill different functions.”

UPDATE: Green emailed later to clarify his comments above, saying:

“What a transmedia producer and a traditional producer do are separate things. I wouldn’t say that they’re secondary, but for the most part, as the term is used today, a transmedia producer chiefly will expand new or established intellectual property across multiple platforms. They’re valuable, even essential members of the producing team, who complement the role of the traditional producer, thanks to their understanding of the strengths and weakness of different types of media and platforms.

“Of course, as transmedia develops and evolves as a form of storytelling, we’re likely to see significant intellectual property created by producers whose ‘native’ mode is working in transmedia — developing properties that leverage multiple media platforms to tell original stories. Those producers would likely wield a similar level of authority and creative control over their creations as traditional producers in film and television do today.”

The general agreement amongst those I talked to was that despite its flaws, the new credit was an important acknowledgment of transmedia by the Hollywood establishment, and might, in Karbassi’s words, lead to “[fewer] puzzled looks on the faces of execs.”

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According to the Times, “people briefed on Hulu’s plan” sad that the site was set to create an app for the upcoming device, but could not say when it would be available. One anonymously quoted Hulu employee compared moving Hulu to other platforms a challenge on the level of passing the recent health care bill, theoretically because of the many powerful players involved, including NBC, Rupert Murdoch, and Disney. However, at DLD Conference in Munich earlier this year, Hulu CEO Jason Kilar said: “The computer in your pocket is very important. Mobile is a monster – we are very bullish. We will embrace any device.”

When polled last year, an overwhelming majority of NewTeeVee readers said firmly that they would not pay to use the site. But as Liz Gannes might say, we shouldn’t freak out over the possibility, as much of the content will probably remain available for free. Kilar even tells the Times that they are open to a subscription model that would complement the ad-based one.

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In today’s blog post by YouTube Chief Counsel Zahavah Levine, Levine takes issue with some of Viacom’s accusations towards YouTube,, given Viacom made repeated attempts to acquire YouTube before the Google deal happened:

Viacom’s brief misconstrues isolated lines from a handful of emails produced in this case to try to show that YouTube was founded with bad intentions, and asks the judge to believe that, even though Viacom tried repeatedly to buy YouTube, YouTube is like Napster or Grokster.

According to CNET, Viacom was in fact serious enough about acquiring YouTube that it extended an offer prior to Oct. 9, 2006, when the deal was announced. What they proposed was that the two companies buy it together as a partnership, and thus “Viacom [would legitimize] the content on the site by providing content and developing a business model,” former Viacom exec Adam Cahan told CNET writer Greg Sandoval.

Before Google bought YouTube, Viacom was looking at the site, and even cautiously saying so publicly: On Oct. 4, 2006, Viacom Founder Sumner Redstone told Charlie Rose that YouTube was a potential acquisition as opposed to Facebook. “It’s a very good company,” he’s quoted as saying (video embedded below).

Five days after that interview, though, Google officially announced it would acquire YouTube for $1.65 billion. And five months after that, Viacom took its first legal action against YouTube, demanding that more than 100,000 clips be removed.

It’s interesting to consider what might have happened to YouTube had the Viacom acquisition occurred. You probably wouldn’t hear talk like “YouTube has become a metaphor for the democratizing power of the Internet and information” (per today’s blog post by YouTube Chief Counsel Zahavah Levine) if the site hadn’t remained independent from big media.

Instead, YouTube might have resembled MySpace following its acquisition by News Corp, working overtime to promote its parent company’s media properties. YouTube’s allegation that Viacom used YouTube as a promotional device after the Google acquisition only supports that theory.

Perhaps as an apology, Google offered Viacom $590 million for a licencing deal (per Peter Kafka on Twitter). But that doesn’t change the fact that like a cheerleader with too many options, YouTube decided to go with someone else to the prom. And so in the Viacom filing made public today, Viacom attacked YouTube’s principles and ethics with statements like:

YouTube’s founders single-mindedly focused on geometrically increasing the number of YouTube users to maximize its commercial value. They recognized they could achieve that goal only if they cast a blind eye to and did not block the huge number of unauthorized copyrighted works posted on the site. The founders’ deliberate decision to build a business based on piracy enabled them to sell their start-up business to Google after 16 months for $1.8 billion.

You have to admit, that kind of sounds like something a bitter ex would write.

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Kyte now Offering Broadcast-Quality Live Video Streaming Backpack; the LivePro backpack, made by LiveU, will be released at SXSW. (TechCrunch)

Microsoft Launches Free Rival to BBC iPlayer; new UK-only video service will launch with a thousand hours of free British programming. (TimesOnline)

Distance Ed Students Forming College Clubs Online; students working toward degrees online are forming groups to recreate the social and professional opportunities of campus life, including video lectures and Q&As. (USA Today)

Online Challenge: Getting TV Viewers to Pay Up; in Canada, Bell Canada and Rogers’ cable division launched subscriber-only online TV services last fall, but they’re not making any money yet. (The Globe and Mail)

Covering the Street Protests in Tehran: How Reuters Curates UGC via Twitter; Beet.TV speaks with Greg Beitchman, Global Editor of the Reuters News Agency about Reuters’ use of citizen journalism. (Beet.TV)

While we’re still waiting to hear from ABC.com about how its video coverage performed, Livestream.com’s hosting of the AP’s red carpet concluded with George Clooney saying farewell to over 100,000 viewers.

Oscar chatter on Twitter was also huge according to our friends at Trendrr, with “Oscar” mentions peaking at nearly 70,000.

Meanwhile, the other big drama of the night — the big face-off between Cablevision and ABC, which was resolved 15 minutes after the ceremony began — created two big spikes in Twitter traffic, with the two terms tracking pretty cleanly together.

And The Hurt Locker‘s underdog triumph meant that positive Twitter sentiment about Avatar plunged, which is best interpreted as fans mourning James Cameron’s defeat.

While the lack of live-streaming for the actual ceremony was frustrating for both Cablevision customers and cord-cutters nationwide, the social media surrounding the ceremony seems to have done its job and driven audiences to ABC. Though the fact that the highest-grossing film of all time (before inflation) was up for seven awards probably didn’t hurt, either.

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Clicker Redesigns Its Online Video Guide; with a web site redesign it unveiled on Thursday, Clicker hopes to guide viewers to the shows they want. (NY Times Bits blog)

Omniture in Three-Screen Data Pact With NBC for Online Video Reporting; Omniture is developing a three-screen system for analyzing consumer interest and behavior, and has signed up NBC as one of its first customers for the solution. (Beet.TV)

YouTube Will Be Profitable in 2010; Patrick Walker, director of partnerships for YouTube, said he expects the online video service to be profitable this year. (Broadband TV News)

Sky Plans Germany’s First Live 3-D Telecast; Sky Deutschland is following in the footsteps of its UK counterpart with a live 3-D transmission of the Bundesliga. (Broadband TV News)

HDMI Group Releases 3D-TV Version of Spec; the entity responsible for licensing the High-Definition Multimedia Interface specification has released version 1.4a of the spec, which adds mandatory 3-D formats for broadcast content. (Multichannel News)

Comcast in Talks With TiVo About ‘Premiere;’ Comcast is discussing the possibility of porting TiVo’s Premiere user interface — designed to provide enhanced search and recommendation features on HDTV sets — to a tru2way-based platform. (Multichannel News)

Adobe to Release Support for HTTP Flash Streaming Next Month; sometime in April, Adobe is expected to officially announce that the technology is available with CDNs and will also announce content owners who are using the new service. (Streaming Media blog)

mPoint Relaunches as Panvidea; mPoint, which had been a cloud-based video encoding platform, has relaunched as Panvidea, with an expanded focus on streamlining video preparation and the post-production process for professional media companies. (VideoNuze)

Networks Plan ‘Full Load’ of Ads in Online Programs; networks including CBS are considering moving toward a full ad load online, potentially ushering in significant dollars for online video. (Beet.TV)

Kerry: Game of Retrans Chicken Must End; Sen. John Kerry is weighing in at the FCC on the retrans fight between WABC-TV and Cablevision, asking the agency to urge the parties to stay at the table and continue airing the station over the cable system in the interim. (Multichannel News)

Vimeo Launches PlusStats Video Analytics for Paid Members; Vimeo has added some ultra-modern video analytics for Vimeo Plus users. (ReelSEO)

ABC has given Cablevision until midnight on March 7 to negotiate a retrans agreement or risk losing its broadcast programming, which includes popular TV shows like Lost, Grey’s Anatomy and Desperate Housewives, as well as live events like this weekend’s Academy Awards broadcast.

Both sides have set up web sites and plan to launch TV, radio and print ads to help “educate” consumers about where they stand on the issues — namely, who gets paid and how much. On its web site, www.saveabc7.com, ABC complains that Cablevision charges consumers $18 for its basic broadcast tier of TV stations, but then doesn’t pass any of that money on to the broadcaster. Meanwhile, Cablevision says Disney is seeking $40 million to continue airing its ABC broadcasts to cable subscribers, which it equates to a 20 percent “tax” on top of the $200 million it already pays for Disney programming.

But this fight is unlikely to result in subscribers’ screens going blank. As we saw with the standoff between Time Warner Cable and Fox earlier this year, and Time Warner Cable and Viacom the year before, such brinksmanship usually ends with an 11th-hour deal, or at worst an extension of the negotiations without a blackout until a deal can be reached. That said, Cablevision has held fast against programmers in the past, most recently against Scripps Networks, which pulled the Food Network and HGTV off its New York cable system for three weeks earlier this year.

But unlike Scripps, ABC’s broadcast signals are available for free over the air — and much of its most popular scripted programming is available on demand on Hulu and ABC.com. While the online component won’t help Cablevision subscribers that want to watch Lost as it airs (ABC’s programs are generally available the day after a show airs in broadcast), and certainly won’t help those that want to watch the Oscars, it could serve as a leveraging chip for Cablevision, which might argue that making broadcast programming available on demand online is cutting into broadcast TV viewing.

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The news of Baidu’s interest in launching an online video site for premium licensed content broke in January, when Providence Equity Partners was rumored to have invested $60 million in the new entity. According to the site’s About page, Qiyi will provide “diversified licensed video content and launches various channels for hit TV shows, movies, documentaries, cartoons, music, variety shows, etc.” At the same time, Baidu says it is committed to abiding by Chinese copyright laws and government regulations to ensure quality of content and user experience.

Baidu isn’t the only firm to have raised significant cash to tackle the online video market in China. In December, online video competitor Youku raised $40 million in a funding round led by Chengwei Ventures, with existing investors Brookside (Bain) Capital, Maverick Capital and Sutter Hill Ventures also participating. So far, Youku has raised $110 million, and now employs more than 300 people.

But while Baidu’s Qiyi will focus exclusively on licensed content, Youku has a mix of licensed and user-generated content. In a video interview with NewTeeVee posted yesterday, Youku CEO Victor Koo said that his site’s content mix is about 70 percent licensed content vs. 30 percent that’s user-generated.

Providence Equity Partners joined the Fox Broadcasting and NBC Universal joint venture Hulu with a $100 million investment in 2007. Unlike Hulu, which now counts Fox, NBC, and Disney as stakeholders, Baidu will remain the only other partner in the firm, and will retain a majority stake in Qiyi.

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Wal-Mart Shutting Down Vudu’s Adult Section; an email has been sent out by Vudu letting its After Dark partners know that the section will be discontinued. (TechCrunch)

Tremor Moves in Real Time; video ad network has announced key improvements to its targeting products, including the use of real-time audience data. (MediaPost)

FCC Proposing TV Spectrum Auction; the agency plans to give broadcasters a chance to turn in their spectrum in exchange for an auction pay-off. (Multichannel News)

Reelzchannel Reels in FiOS Carriage Deal; Reelzchannel has signed a video-on-demand programming distribution deal with Verizon’s FiOS TV. (Multichannel News)

Netflix Cheers Cablevision’s PC-to-TV Play; a Netflix exec welcomed Cablevision’s move to test a product that will easily allow web surfers to bring online video content to the TV. (Light Reading)

CBS CEO Moonves Gets New Five-Year Deal; CBS has reached a new employment agreement with CEO Leslie Moonves, superseding an existing deal that was scheduled to expire in 2011 and extending his employment through 2015. (Multichannel News)

Joining Smith at Code Advisors are Mike Marquez, who served as the head of Corporate Development and Business Development for CBS Interactive, and Fred Davis, who was founder and senior partner of entertainment law firm Davis, Shapiro, Lewit & Hayes. According to a report by Kara Swisher, the firm is also collecting a high-profile group of advisers, including Danny Rimer of Index Ventures, former Netscape Communications CFO Peter Currie and David Golden, EVP of Steve Case’s Revolution LLC.

The new investment firm, which is headquartered in San Francisco but has offices in New York, seeks to bring some media and technology expertise back into the investment banking space, Smith said in a phone interview. “Twenty years ago, there was far less innovation and far less media, but there were four investment banks focused in the new media space. But today there really aren’t any,” he said.

The firm has already wrapped up some big-name clients, including CBS (which announced it was retaining Smith’s advisory services even before he left), Comcast and Spotify, among others. Smith said via phone that it was important to note that the group is not primarily focused on helping its clients get acquired, which is why most investment banks are called in, but to help shape their future business models.

Mike Marquez, also on the call, agreed: “The opportunity here is in blending media and technology in a way that is complementary and not cannibalistic. We’re pushing media companies to think about their business models in a new way.”

The three partners are interested in using the Internet and digital technologies as a way to extend their clients revenues in new markets. Marquez cited Vevo as a good example of a new digital entity that will help its partners to monetize assets that they previously weren’t able to. As for the types of technologies they’re looking at, Marquez said that mobile and gaming were of particular interest, as a way to extend the user experience.

The deal is a big get for Auditude, which specializes in “ad decisioning,” as CEO Adam Cahan put it in an interview last week. Basically Auditude balances who owns the rights to make money from a video with what ads are available. Since Comcast pulls from 50 to 60 different content partners, figuring out whose ads to run and who makes what money from them can get extremely complicated.

Cahan said Auditude engaged in a rigorous review alongside competing video ad platforms last year before scoring the Comcast deal. However, he declined to provide any metrics about how the integration is going so far.

Auditude, which has raised $23 million from investors including Redpoint Ventures and Greylock Partners, faces solid competition; for instance, its competitor FreeWheel has a relationship with YouTube, the juggernaut in the online video space. Auditude’s other customers include Major League Baseball’s live video (done in partnership with Yahoo), MySpace TV and Music and MTV.

Cahan said that the biggest trend he’s seeing in the market is that video advertising companies are starting to make real revenue, with multiple companies “for the first time ever having double-digit quarters.” He predicted online video advertising, which has long lagged behind online video viewership growth, will reach “significant scale” this year.

Because some of the concerns raised by our readers were intriguing, I’ve spent the last week trying to get a better understanding of Bannen Way‘s multi-million viewcount and how it fits into the web video marketplace. So here are a few of your FAQs hopefully answered:

If Bannen Way really earned 8.4 million views, why wasn’t it on Mashable’s top 10 web series of January chart?

That one’s simple: According to Matt Fiorentino of Visible Measures, which creates the chart every month for Mashable, the reason Bannen Way didn’t make it on the list was that only shows with public view counts are included. Because Crackle no longer makes its numbers generally viewable on their site, Bannen Way was ineligible.

What did Crackle use to measure views on Bannen Way?

A traffic analysis solution called SiteCatalyst, created by online marketing and analytics company Omniture (which is now owned by Adobe). Media companies like Turner Broadcasting. MTV Networks and, yep, Crackle use SiteCatalyst to measure their viewcounts, and according to a Omniture product manager, SiteCatalyst’s settings can be customized however the client wishes to determine what counts as a view.

So what counts as a view, then?

According to not one but two Crackle representatives, when a Crackle video finishes its 15-second pre-roll ad and begins playing the actual content, it counts as a view — it doesn’t matter how much of the actual video the viewer watches, so long as the pre-roll has finished playing. This means that if you visit Bannen Way‘s Crackle page and the video auto-plays, it’ll count as a view if you don’t click away before the pre-roll’s done, like one out of six users do according to TubeMogul.

(Fun fact: In the process of writing and researching this piece alone I visited Crackle’s Bannen Way page several times, and probably added about 10-20 views to the official count all on my own, thanks to the autoplay and the short length of the pre-roll.)

According to comScore, Crackle.com received only 2.7 million unique visitors in January. How does that correspond with the claimed viewcount?

This is the big issue. Let’s do some math. First, if we average out Bannen Way’s 8.4 million views over a period of approximately six weeks (Dec. 29-Feb. 9), we get 1.4 million views per week, which means an estimated 5.6 million views over the course of January (the real number may be higher or lower, depending on traffic thanks to promotion around the show’s premiere, but that’s what we have to go on today).

Second, about comScore — because the online measurement organization relies on sampling to gather its numbers, the comScore reporting’s accuracy isn’t as good as Crackle’s internal metrics, which measure actual visitation. A Crackle representative, speaking on background, stated that the comScore number, when measured against Crackle’s internal metrics, has in the past been between 20 percent and 200 percent lower than its actual numbers.

Let’s say that the comScore number is 20 percent lower than Crackle’s allegedly more accurate internal visitor count, which would be 3.24 million unique visitors for the month of January. For the purpose of this exercise, let’s assume that half of those unique visitors visited Crackle to watch Bannen Way instead of the other programming available, given the effort that Sony and Crackle have put into promoting the series. That comes to 1.62 million uniques for Bannen Way alone.

Third, comScore is only measuring unique visitors, not the actual number of video streams that occurred — their statistic for January will be available at the end of the month. Given the heavy amount of good press and positive buzz surrounding Bannen Way, it’s not impossible to imagine people tuning in multiple times to watch episodes — which wouldn’t affect the unique visitor count, but would contribute to the number of views.

Thus, if our 5.6 million streams in January estimation is at least vaguely accurate, that means the typical estimated unique visitor (1.62 million) at least started to watch approximately three to four episodes of the show over the course of the month.

Three to four episodes of a high-profile 16-episode show per site visitor over the course of a month isn’t out of the question, and it’s even more believable when you consider the fact that when you visit the main Crackle page for Bannen Way, the first episode is always the one that auto-plays. This means that if you come to the page hoping to watch a later episode and don’t scroll down and click on the desired ep before the pre-roll finishes, that counts as two views instead of one.

Crackle would not make their stats on repeat viewership available for publication, but it did confirm that over 90 percent of those 8.4 million streams occurred not through embeds on other sites, but on Crackle.com.

Let me be clear about this, though — the only confirmed numbers in this piece are comScore’s reported 2.7 million unique visitors and Bannen Way‘s 8.4 million streams. I’m still stuck with a fair amount of conjecture, the fundamentals of which you may or may not agree with. But what all of this discussion cements is that, more than ever, the need for a independent reporting service for metrics, similar to Nielsen, for the web video world, to provide us with reliable numbers we trust.

Because once we get to that point, viewers know what’s legitimately popular across all sites, companies don’t have to juggle several different services in order to put out the numbers they ought to take pride in, and advertisers know what they’re paying for. In short: Everyone wins.

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Louderback still doesn’t really like pre-rolls, and he fears that they might hinder virality and in turn kill the very same plant they’re supposed to nourish. I think those fears are valid, but it’s not fair to hold them against the format per se. Pre-rolls have not only survived because everything else failed, but because the format itself and the content it’s meant to monetize have been changing. In fact, these changes have caused me to change my mind as well: I used to hate them, but now actually prefer them over other forms of advertising.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m the first one to admit that a 30 second pre-roll for a two minute video is the wrong way to go. “I’m afraid they… depress video sharing and snacking — which is ultimately how a video goes viral,” Louderback writes, and I think he’s absolutely right, especially because virality is so very personal these days. Recommending a video to your Facebook friends that forces them to watch long and boring ads before it even starts is like inviting a salesman over to their house.

However, I do like pre-rolls if they’re done right:

• They’re great for long-form content. My ability to tolerate pre-roll ads increases significantly with the length of the actual video I’m watching. I hate them in combination with short YouTube clips, but have no problems watching a longer pre-roll ad on Hulu. The same goes for some of the shows that Louderback’s Revision3 and other online studios are producing, especially if I’m familiar with them. Give me something I want to watch for half an hour, and I don’t mind waiting 30 seconds. Of course, online-only shows still need virality and snacking to gather an audience. That’s where excerpts come in — but without pre-rolls, please.
• Pre-rolls work even better if they offer some choice. Hulu has been successfully experimenting with pre-roll ads that offer viewers the ability to choose between different ad options, with one being a 2:30 minute pre-roll that lets you watch the rest of the show ad-free. I don’t know about you, but I go for the long pre-roll ad every single time.
• Pre-rolls are great if they match the context. Watching a half minute ad about breakfast rolls before an online video starts up can be somewhat annoying, but an ad that actually fits in with the content you’re about to watch is much less distracting. Take the pre-roll YouTube is serving before the We Are The World 25 For Haiti music video for example. Can anyone really be mad at Quincy Jones for plugging anything before a music video of a song he wrote, much less for asking for a donation? Of course, Google isn’t making any money with this ad, and one could argue that it is much more like a sponsorship than a traditional pre-roll. However, reload the page, and you’ll see that the ad won’t play twice. It’s in fact a pre-roll, but a very well targeted one. I suspect that Google is going to get much better at matching up contextual pre-roll ads with YouTube clips, and I’d think that others could greatly benefit from targeting like this as well.

What do you think? Do you hate pre-rolls? Have you learned to live with them? Or is it all about the context? Let us know in the comments!

Image courtesy of Flickr user x-ray delta one.

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UK Online Video Service SeeSaw Goes Live; the service goes live with more than 3,000 hours of content and partnerships with BBC Worldwide, Channel 4, Five and several major UK independent production companies. (The Telegraph)

NBA Breaks Record with 17 Million Video Streams of All-Star Game; NBA Digital reports that it had 4.95 million video streams of the All-Star game on Sunday, February 15, with a total of 17 million views, which is 20% more than last year. (Beet.TV)

TiVo Granted Season Pass Patent; on February 16th, TiVo was finally given the legal exclusive on what looks like “season pass” prioritization, conflict resolution, and recording. (Zatz Not Funny!)

Verizon Takes the FiOS Experience Mobile; FiOS TV customers who also have a Motorola Droid or HTC Imagio handset can use these devices to control their TV set-top-box. (Verizon at Home blog)

Zoran Announces Integrated VUDU Apps Reference Design; Zoran is integrating VUDU into its advanced processor design platforms, enabling rapid deployment of Internet-connected HDTVs for its OEM and ODM customers. (press release)