Media buyers need to get up to speed on video ad buying. Here's a crash course to make the process easier.

Recent statistics make it clear that a major player in the future of media buying will be video. Although video advertising accounted for only 2 percent of all online advertising spending in 2007, according to the IAB Report on Interactive Advertising, eMarketer predicts that spending on online rich media and video ads together will account for nearly one-fifth of all online ad spending by 2012, up from 9.7 percent of all online ad spending in 2007.

For this projection to come true, however, media buyers need to get up to speed on video ad buying.

The formats
A major area of confusion for advertisers new to video is the different video formats. With pre-roll, in-video, interactive video banners and take-over page video displays, some industry pundits have argued that the variety of video advertorial formats has actually prevented the online video market from grabbing more market share.

"Though a single industry standard for digital video might help to expedite its growth in market share, we do not feel it to be beneficial to place creative limitations on our advertisers in this medium at this time," OMD's Robert D'Asaro says. "In the future it is our belief that digital video campaigns will be a mix of standard -- once standards are determined -- and non-standard units and placements that will be dictated by an individual advertiser's marketing/campaign goals."