Online video has had explosive growth in just the last two years. Just think, two years ago, the major tv networks didn’t offer online viewing of their prime-time shows, lifecasting was scarcely a term (justin.tv wasn’t around to show us just how great live online broadcasting could be), if you wanted to broadcast video there wasn’t much selection in services and you still had to pay a hefty price for the bandwidth, even YouTube didn’t offer much in the way of advertising (of course that was before Google bought them, too).

So with this explosive growth has come the consumers that watch the videos, bookmark them, rate them, comment on them and much more. This has given rise to the newer use of advertising in these videos. But there’s quite a selection in ad formats with online video. Emarketer.com published a story just yesterday that helped to summarize the formats and make understanding the concept just a little easier. Here’s the link to the article and here’s a link to the IAB, who created the guidelines to which these formats follow.

The graphic below summarizes the various ad formats and placements:

Also, in an upcoming post, I’ll outline several online video platforms that have a variety of uses, the features, pros, cons and my general opinion based on my experience with the service. It’ll be a very informative post… stay tuned!!!

It was hypothesized not long ago that Yahoo would either have to accept and acquisition offer from Microsoft or embrace Google’s ad network to stay afloat and profitable. Last week, Yahoo pass again on Microsoft’s offer sending a stern letter in response. Today, Yahoo announced that they’re going to embrace Google and are performing a small test of their Adsense platform fulfilling what many deemed as inevitable. The test, although significant, is only expected to last two weeks and only incorporate 3% of Yahoo’s market.

Microsoft was quick to issue a response to the news saying that that if Yahoo were to offer Google ads, it would consolidate 90% of the search advertising market in Google’s hands.

For those currently advertising in search, it would create a single point in which to advertise on both major search portals and their individual services (Yahoo is currently the leader in online email users) cutting down on the need to advertise using two ad networks. The potential downside is that it does limit those advertisers who want to work with ad networks outside of Google. I can see both sides of the coin. Honestly, it’s a difficult pill to swallow for Yahoo, but necessary.

What do you think?

We’ve put the finishing touches on the all new Summer Bridal Show website which is now live! It’s a new design based closely on the last one we did for them for the Holiday Bridal Show.

Check out the screenshot below and click here to view the new website .