If you think you understand web video, you're wrong, according to Shelly Palmer. But asking the right questions will count for more than a foolhardy belief that you've got all the answers.

Digital denizens who eagerly predict the day when TV will no longer permeate the lives of consumers got a reality check Monday from a man who plainly told attendees at the iMedia Breakthrough Summit in Rancho Mirage, Calif. that he had no ability to predict the future.

"I don't know anything about the future," Shelly Palmer, managing director at Advanced Media Ventures, said in his opening remarks. "But what I do know is that only an idiot would stand here and tell this room that he knows what the future holds."

Poking fun at himself as well as at some of the wild predictions commonly tossed around at industry events, Palmer declared himself not to be an idiot. With that comedic opening, Palmer took aim at an oxymoronic topic -- the present future of television.

"The question of whether we're going to have networked -- as opposed to network -- TV has already been answered," Palmer told the crowd. "We are now out of the experimental phase, and that means that we are in the least sexy part of the transition because we are trying to figure out things like workflow for internet video and how to execute adverting against that medium."

According to Palmer, the questions of minutia that seem to define today's internet video landscape are the sources of pain for many advertisers who wrongly look at online video as a singular medium.

"Online video is really three ideas happening all at once," Palmer said.

Turning to the most ubiquitous form of online video, YouTube, Palmer challenged the crowd to see what he called video snacking as an entirely new art form.

"Video snacking is what's happening on YouTube, and you have to realize that it's a totally different thing than TV," Palmer said. "Where TV is about long-form content, YouTube videos are short; where YouTube is about low-resolution videos, TV is anything but; and where YouTube videos are cheap to produce, TV is always going to be expensive."

According to Palmer, the relatively new art form of YouTube videos isn't one that is friendly to advertisers because the length of the content will likely never lend itself to ad units like pre-roll. However, Palmer said, YouTube videos have a place in terms of establishing credibility.

"Jimmy Kimmel and Sarah Silverman got a ton of views for their videos," Palmer said in reference to the couple's humorous take on the collective sex appeal of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. "But Kimmel didn't make any money off the videos. What he got was street credit. People saw the videos and that helped Kimmel raise his profile."

Turning to the second prong that defines internet video, Palmer made the point that many consumers are choosing to enter what he called the download market.

"Usually, when we talk downloads, we're talking about movies," Palmer said. "But downloads, unlike YouTube videos, have a clear value attached to them because some consumers pay a price to own the content."

Sandwiched between the download space and the burgeoning short-form market is the dynamically evolving TV experience delivered via the web, according to Palmer.

"There are growing numbers of people who are watching full-length TV on the web," Palmer said.

But Palmer was quick to point out that the growing numbers of consumers who use the web to watch TV are probably not representative of most of the country.

"Nothing is replacing anything," Palmer said. "It's all part of a media mix that will just get more and more complicated."

The challenge for marketers, according to Palmer, is to make sense of the increasingly complicated space. While many in the room may have been tempted to focus on only a single component of internet video, Palmer made clear that each segment has its own value system.

"The internet is very good at creating value, but it's not always great at turning value into wealth," Palmer said. "There are all kinds of currencies out there. Currencies are things like passion, intent, fame and attention. The question for us is how do we come up with a calculus that measures these currencies?"

For Palmer, arriving at a common currency should be the No. 1 priority for the industry. 

Michael Estrin is associate editor at iMediaConnection. Read full bio.