Check out our roundtable, currently live from MSNBC at 30 Rock! Our roundtable is over, but you can check out the two-part rebroadcast below. Thanks to everyone who participated!

Live from 30 Rock - It’s the YuMe Roundtable!

Tune in and watch our roundtable live at yume.com or beet.tv on Tuesday, October 20th from 3-6 p.m. ET.  Hosted by Charles Tillinghast, President & Publisher of msnbc.com and featuring panelists from Adobe, Time Inc., CBSNews, GroupM, the Wall Street Journal, Ogilvy, Transpera and more.

Moderating the sessions will be Rafat Ali, editor and publisher of paidContent, Kevin Delaney, Sr. Deputy Managing Editor of the WSJ.com, and Advertising Age’s Michael Learmonth.

A big thanks to Andy Plesser of Beet.tv and the gang at MSNBC.com for helping me pull together such a great event. Check out the agenda and don’t forget to tune-in!

- Molly Glover Gallatin

comScore and Starcom just released a survey (yes, another study, see eMarketer), stating that click through rates may not be the best.  Both comScore and Starcom brass are on the record saying clicks are worthless.  Hmmm.

We just checked, we’re running dozens of campaigns and have run hundreds over the year.  We’ve served several billion impressions just this year.  There as been one (CPG, if you must know) campaign that has run without the agency or the client asking for CTR.  Interestingly enough, that still seems to be the most asked after metric.  One that has very little correlation, if any, to a branding campaign.

- Jayant Kadambi

I don’t know the marketer that began using “less is more,” but it seems to be attributed to Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, a German born architect from the mid-19th century.  Yet another survey has hit the newsstands or blogs or whatever we are calling it today stating that the less adverts people put on video the better.  Can I be paid to run that survey?  I need the free money.

But the article does go on to postulate that all people aren’t the same and some people would prefer to pay for content rather than watch an advert and publishers/content owners should think about a hybrid model.  Then they make a mistake and compare it to cable TV.  Cable TV isn’t much of a hybrid.  you pay an enormous sum monthly and see ads.  But still, the statment does have merit.  The business of video online is unsustainable without renumeration to the content owners, distributors, etc., so one way or the other, money will have to flow back to the people making content.

We announced today our new video ad unit called PowerRoll DataConnect with advertising partner Land Rover, the luxury carmaker.  PowerRoll DataConnect is a video ad that is enhanced with an interactive overlay or graphics (GIF, JPG, or Flash) on top of the video ad, making it more relevant, informative and engaging.  The new DataConnect feature provides the ability for advertisers to pull in an xml data feed, like auto retailer locations, and in real-time display this information to viewers who are watching the pre-roll.  You can see a demo of this ad unit on our ad gallery.  You will see that if you enter your zip code the 3 closest retailers will be displayed within the player.  It’s a great example of how a pre-roll can be localized to the viewer.

Gavin O’Malley of MediaPost did a great article on this, check it out.

- Molly Glover Gallatin

Yesterday we had our second annual Bar Game Olympics in NYC at Slate.  We had a great turnout from our ad agency clients who competed in Foosball, Pool and the all time favorite - Beer Pong.  The winning agency for the event - OMD!  Below are a few pictures from the event.

- Molly Glover Gallatin

We announced today a unique partnership with AutoTrader.com Access, AutoTrader’s ad network, for behavioral targeting.  This is a unique alliance because it is the first time a leading automotive site and video ad network and technology company have aligned to reach auto intenders as they are engaged in watching video content.

AutoTrader.com will be the first automotive site and reseller of behavioral targeting across YuMe’s premium video ad network.

“The marriage of our in market data with YuMe’s video ad network will help us deliver more value to those advertisers who want to reach qualified audiences and maximize their campaign ROI,” said Anne Steinhauer, AutoTrader.com vice president of national accounts, who oversees AutoTrader.com Access.

This partnership will benefit advertisers who are looking beyond endemic auto sites to retain or create awareness for their brand, and in turn increases the monetization of video inventory for the publishers that are part of our video ad network.

- Molly Glover Gallatin

We are very excited to announce today that we have been selected by msnbc.com to act as the exclusive ad serving platform for its embedded video players. YuMe will also sell ad inventory in the players helping to monetize premium online properties like TODAYshow.com and Nightly.msnbc.com, home to “NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams.”

“From the moment we rolled out embedded video, consumers all over the web have been discovering and experiencing all of the great video content that msnbc.com has to offer,” said Kyoo Kim, VP of Sales at msnbc.com. “By tapping into YuMe’s targeting and ad optimization capabilities, we can monetize those video experiences. And marketers, who previously shied away from viral video, can now associate themselves with msnbc.com’s quality, trusted content and take advantage of viral distribution.”

Below is an example of the msnbc.com embedded player.

- Molly Glover Gallatin

We are thrilled to announce that Fox News, Glam , IDG Entertainment and Funny or Die have selected YuMe’s ACE video ad platform to manage the monetization of their video inventory. Check out our press release we sent out today announcing this news and highlighting the impressive growth we have achieved with not only the adoption of our video ad platform, but with the growth of our video ad network and advertising sales.

Here’s the quote from Funny or Die, which you will see is in true Funny or Die fashion. “YuMe’s ACE video ad platform is a true end-to-end solution,” said Mitch Galbraith, COO of Funny or Die. “ACE has streamlined our ad operations, improved inventory management, increased revenue, eliminated the common cold from our office, cured my fear of heights, and taught several of our employees to speak Portuguese.”

We also announced today that with the release of comScore’s April Video Metrix Ad Network report, YuMe is now ranked the largest video ad network with over 63 million unique viewers and 560 million video streams per month.

In addition to the great growth we have experienced with publisher adoption of our video ad platform, we have also seen tremendous momentum with video advertising sales. We now have over 100 advertisers running on any given day across our premium video ad network and the number of monthly ad impressions we are serving has increased by over 325% since January!

We are very excited about the advancements we have made in 2009 and congratulations to the YuMe team for all their hard work.

- Molly Glover Gallatin

So, sometimes, stating the obvious, or reiterating the obvious is good practice. For example, Brian Morrissey, in an article titled “Real-Time, The Web’s New Prime Time” says that feedback loops are good, and even better, if the feedback is fast, or in “real-time” it’s even better. Hmm. I guess I could be sarcastic at this point, but I won’t.

I will, however, state that being able to change and alter ads (including video) to run A/B tests, to customise to the user watching and make incremental alterations to the advert while the ad campaign is running will by definition provide better results. We are still not seeing the industry take heavy advantage of this in video, which we attribute to the fact that video is a very nascent.

- Jayant Kadambi