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The video, entitled 'What's a VIDEO worth?' is designed to show just how big online video has become, how big it is expected to grow and why brands would be remiss not to hop on the online video bandwagon.  Just a few of the statistics that companies and brands will find hard to ignore in the video are as follows: 68% of viewers share video links (and sharing means more promotion for your brand!) More than 50% of the videos on YouTube have been rated or include comments from the community (which means a brand new way to engage with your customers!) Having a video on the landing page of your website makes it 53% more likely to show up on the first page of a Google search (and who doesn't like higher ranking in search results?) The average user's visit to a text and image-based website lasts only 43 seconds; for a website with video, the average visit lasts 5 minutes and 50 seconds (ding! ding! ding!) Customers that watch videos of products or services are 85% more likely to make a purchase (ka-ching!)

"SundaySky's 2012 "State of Video in E-Commerce" report compiles data from internal and external studies to uncover the latest trends in online video marketing. SundaySky found that a short-form video advertisement without personalization had a 50 percent consumer completion rate. However, according to the study, a slightly longer long-form video advertisement with added consumer personalization will garner 2.5 times longer viewing times. "2012 will be remembered for the first online Olympics and the first digital election, perhaps not the year of personally relevant video, but we did learn that personalization is the key to increasing video engagement," said SundaySky VP of Marketing Kelly Ford in a blog post."

""With YouTube external annotations, we're trying to make it a very seamless process," said Lisa Green, industry director at Google. "If while you're watching it, you see something you really want, you can click... We've allowed the user to make the decision to make the purchase" in the video. The beta feature is available to all existing clients, although Google won't disclose how many advertisers have shown interest or signed up thus far. Juicy Couture, one of the first brands to adopt the shoppable feature, released a new video directed by Terry Richardson featuring Candice Swanepoel at the famed Chateau Marmont hotel. The fashion label features nineteen different products in the second video. YouTube's shoppable video ads will display a shaded rectangle in the middle of the screen whenever a product appears. When a user rolls over that embedded video link, the product name is displayed with a link to the purchase page. Google's product and sales teams are working with advertisers to bring these new ads into their videos on YouTube, Green said."

"Hulu, the online aggregator of repurposed TV content and subscription video-on-demand, continued its apparent slide by failing to rank among the Top 10 U.S. online video sites in September, according to new data from comScore. Reston, Va.-based comScore found that Amazon, which includes Amazon Prime Instant Video and Amazon Instant Video (transactional VOD), ranked 10th with more than 31 million unique viewers who watched nearly 107 million videos at 12.8 minutes per viewer."

"More than a third (36%) of rich media full-page ads used video, and 28% of campaigns used in-banner video in Q2 and Q3. Interaction rates for custom buttons in that ad format -- for getting more information or viewing photos or video, for example -- ranged from 2.2% to 10.8%. For rich full-page ads, Rhythm says adding a mini video player boosts interaction rates for the units by 30%, to 3.8% to 12%."

"News Distribution Network isn't a household name, but news consumers sure watch a lot of the videos the company distributes. In fact, NDN broke the top 10 in comScore's ranking of top online video properties in October, with an audience topping 53 million. It just signed a deal with CBS Local to distribute video from 13 local CBS stations including New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. And a handful of sites are now starting to let NDN remotely program video on their sites."

Video Star for iOS facilitates the creation of homespun music videos to go along with any song on your device. To use it, you simply choose a song from your music library and start shooting. You can act along with the song, lip sync, dance, shoot video of your dog, or whatever.

"MTV is having scores of its staffers at the September 6 Video Music Awards use Viddy

"According to the Huffington Post, "MTV is having scores of its staffers at the September 6 Video Music Awards use Viddy, a video sharing platform that allows users to upload and share 15-second videos, says Colin Helms, MTV's SVP for Digital in this interview with Beet.TV" As we mentioned just over a month ago, journalists were calling Viddy "the Instagram of video," as its quick clips took Facebook by storm. But then Facebook did a one-two knockout and it all but disappeared from the platform."

1. online video will become a must for brands and businesses 2. we'll see a shift from UGC to professional content 3. we'll sit through more online video ads than ever 4. online video will become more social 5. producing quality content will be easier than ever 6. people will start taking copyright seriously 7. online video WON'T kill TV

But in the last several months, AT&T has been reducing the number and length of calls to its call centers by relying on so-called smart videos from New York City-based SundaySky. The videos are personalized tutorials that are built on the fly using pre-scripted clips mixed with the subscriber's own data. The system works off a video template that incorporates visual elements, narration and integrated information from a user's account. Users end up seeing a video bill that addresses them, acknowledges their recent account activity and leads them through their biggest billing questions.

But it's AOL's own properties the company aims to build up as a go-to premium buy for brand advertisers. Display revenue on AOL properties grew by 2 percent. The company is betting on premium ad formats such as its rich-media laden Project Devil units to entice brands to spend more. AOL reported that more than half of the advertisers who bought the ads in Q1 re-upped this past quarter. Armstrong admitted that last year the company's focus was not data-driven, and stressed the firm's renewed mission to ensure that data - meaning results-related numbers proving the value of buying AOL's ad products - is at the heart of its sales approach. People cannot leave the building without data, said Armstrong. Mobile and video ad revenue are key to future growth for AOL, said Armstrong, who said that last summer 75 percent of insertion orders included both platforms. Today, it's close to 100 percent, he said. The company reported that videos, video views, and video revenue rose at double-digit rates, though it did not break out revenues for video advertising.

Indeed, each of the top five video ad properties,  including BrightRoll, Hulu, Adap.tv, and TubeMogul, as well as YouTube, delivered more than 1 billion video ads last month, according to the new data from comScore.   Following Google's prized property -- which ranked first with 1.41 billion ads -- the BrightRoll Video Network accounted for nearly 1.39 billion ads; Hulu was responsible for 1.33 billion ads; Adap.tv chalked up 1.15 billion ads; while the TubeMogul Video Ad Platform recorded 1.04 billion ads.

Goal: The Wild Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to protecting the wilderness, started the Forever Wild Rhino Protection initiative to save Rhinos from extinction due to hunting in Asia.  Problem: Like all non-profits they had no money to create awareness and get support.  Insight: People don't always pay attention to these types of serious causes, but they sure seem to have a lot of time to watch silly viral videos on the internet.  Strategy: Find a way to have the message integrated into these silly viral videos... for free.  Solution: Download the top trending viral videos from YouTube, edit part of the video to include messaging about their initiative, re-upload the video with the same exact title as the original and call it YouTube Interventions. 

"YouTube is testing out a new interactive feature that lets video creators add questions within their videos.  Video Questions Editor Beta lets you easily create a question that will pop up during your video to poll your viewers.  Read on to find out how it works."

"New York-The Wall Street Journal has introduced WSJ WorldStream, a news platform for short-form videos shot with smartphones by journalists from the Journal and Dow Jones & Co. WSJ WorldStream, which is debuting in conjunction with the Republican National Convention in Tampa this week-builds on WSJ Live, the Journal's online-video initiative. The videos from WSJ WorldStream will be embedded in stories on WSJ.com and integrated into the Journal's daily live video programming. WSJ WorldStream is also available as a free Web app."

Video Q&A site focuses on conversational videos

Among the findings: Overall, 29% of video service customers watch paid video content via handheld device. Some 18% of customers use tablets for viewing paid video content, making them the most-often-used handheld device, up from 11% in 2011. The use of wireless phone customers has increased to 16% in 2012, up from 14% a year earlier. Viewing of paid content via desktop and laptop (PC/Mac) has declined to 39%, down from 48% in 2011.

Mogreet launched the AdStitch mobile advertising service Tuesday, combining high-quality video ads with mobile messaging to help brands easily recoup return on investments. Cox Media Group's Oakland, Calif. television station, KTVU, has been testing a morning weather alert to subscribers along with an ad in the MMS message on mobile phones. The ad in the message typically ranges from five to 15 seconds, but more advertisers want to create shorter clips. The best-performing ad units are shorter, according to Mogreet CEO James Citron. "An automaker knows showing a five- or a 15-second video of a car performs better than 20 characters in text, banner or display ad," Citron said. He believes MMS is the only way publishers can reach 95% of Americans with mobile video.

"Facebook video viewership is growing by leaps and bounds. It now sees 8 billion average daily video views from 500 million users. That's up from just 4 billion video views per day in April. "

"But someone must still curate all of this citizen journalism, and that's where a group called Video The Vote comes in. A member of a network of voting rights groups known as the Election Protection Coalition, Video the Vote wants anybody who notices voting problems to document the situation and bring the footage to its attention. "In an era of partisan voter purges, onerous ID requirements, and organized intimidation, it's not enough for citizens to just cast their ballots," says Matt Pascarella, Video The Vote's campaign director. In addition to collecting citizen uploads, he'll field a national network of his own videographers to target swing-state hotspots."