With the exception of a few brilliant gems, each agency I have visited this year is living with its head in its own aquarium. Agency A thinks Panache is the brass ring for figuring out flexible video ad serving. Agency B says, "Pana-what?" but is dead-set on Hillcrest Labs. Agency C ignored calls from both but is planning a YouTube buy for an objectively ill-fitting brand. It's time to pull our heads out of the aquariums, pull back from a myopic view and, dare I say it, explore the ocean a bit.

Hanlon, lucky me, agrees.

"Shame on us in the agency business if all we do is sit back and wait for all this technology and innovation to come to us -- which is what I would argue is the predominant situation right now," Hanlon says. "If the holding companies and their various brand agencies want to be relevant and valuable to marketers in the years to come, they need to seriously stop operating like it is their divine right to handle advertising and media activities for their current clients and recognize the disintermediation that is afoot from all of the new and unyielding technological innovation that continues to come to market."

Know that you are not going to know everything
Even the savviest of tech reporters in the space might still be unaware of dozens of new technologies and companies sprouting up. It is not the agency's responsibility to catalog every fish in the sea, but to have enough of a working framework of the video landscape to be able to spot the relevant ones and organize them into their respective functional categories. Keeping in mind, of course, that many companies serve multiple or changing functions.