With the incredible rapid growth that online video sharing and video search sites are realizing, more and more advertisers are pumping money into video advertising. According to the latest research, online video advertising revenues in the US are expected to reach $7.1 billion by 2012 which is a 72 percent compound annual growth rate for the next five years. In 2008, the projections are just shy of $1billion.

Since video sites have been realizing more and more traffic growth, they have had a unique opportunity to innovate and test various different online video ad formats. And the advertisers as well are more than happy to experiment as they are looking to these leaders to develop the most effective online video advertising formats. Traditionally, pre-roll, mid-roll, or post-roll ad formats (aka in-stream ads) have been favored by advertisers due to the availability of inventory and prominence of the advertisement itself.

Pre-Roll Ads - In this format of advertising, the advertisement clip is inserted before the actual video and while playing the video, the advertisement clip is played first and the viewer is compelled to watch the advertisement before the start of the real video file.

Post-roll Format - In post-roll, just like the other in-stream ad formats, a short clip is played and streamed within the player at the end of the video stream itself. This is not as desired by advertisers as they know that many users never watch a video all the way until the end.

Mid-Roll Format - With mid-rolls, a short clip is streamed in the middle (sometimes every X minutes) of video content that is playing. This tends to be less annoying to users as they are acustomed to this format in television advertising.

As stated earlier, due to the demand, many of these video websites have begun to test and offer new, innovative ad solutions for video. One of these experimental format is the In-Player ad: With in-player ads the player skin itself can be used to place relevant images or text content for the advertiser so that the ad is displayed for the entire time that the video is played.

Contextual in-video advertising seems to be the way of the future with many different sites attempting to match videos with advertisements that are most relevant to the subject matter. Users like this format more as well as it does not disturb the experience of watching the entire video. This quality of the format makes it one of the most promising advertising formats for the future and there are many diverse ways in which to serve either images, clips, or text ads.

Some of the video sites like to go through the video and include only relevant in-video text advertisements, which match the contents of the video and at the same time it does not disturb the process of video watching by the viewer. Youtube was one of the first sites to adopt this format as a standard and it is called Overlay Video Ads.

I have given you a brief overview of the most common formats of video ads that are being tested and utilized at the moment. That being said, with growth being what it is, and video discovery as new as it is, we will certainly see many different companies innovating in regards to developing new and exciting formats for online video advertising.

Every time a Page rank updates, the same common issues arise, creating confusion regarding your web site’s Page Rank. What the Page Rank and its fluctuations mean cause confusion to the site’s owner. Some usual themes are the following:

1. If, during an update, your PR goes down, it is not necessarily a penalty. The PR is found in the Google toolbar, and is simply the grade that Google assigns your site. Losing powerful links or if a site that links to your site loses PR, will result in your PR lowering. If Google alters changes the way they determine PR, you can also lose PR. Keeping your content fresh will ensure your PR remaining steady. There are a lot of reasons for PR lowering, but none of them are penalty related. Being penalized will only occur if you disobey Webmaster Guidelines, and you will see that penalty in removal from the index or drastic drops in rankings.

2. PR that is displayed is not current. The PR is only current after an update. You could have made a well rounded link profile, even added an interface for user generated content, and still have a PR4 after a couple months. Do not worry about it, because you do not know your actual PR.

3. Higher rankings are not equal to higher PR. Focus on your traffic, rankings and conversions instead of your PR. many searches have PR0-3 that outrank PR4-6, so it is not the only method in the Google algorithm that measures your sites ranking. unless you are selling your links on your site, and need to show your PR as high to sell, do not worry about the PR. Be sure to keep that in perspective, while not completely ignoring it. PR is the general snapshot of your site in the eyes of Google. Generally, you will rank higher with high PR, but that is just one piece of the puzzle.

4. PR juice flows. Without obsessing about your PR, understand that acquiring high PR links will flow PR to your site as well. Worrying about your own site’s PR may not be as valuable as making sure that your incoming links are from high or mid PR sites. If you are working towards obtaining links, high PR pages mixed in, naturally, will greatly benefit you. If you look at PR as a trust snapshot, then obtaining a link from a more trusted site, at the same time being relevant to your industry, will not only boost your PR, but your ranking as well.

Usually, a drop or increase in PR that doesn’t coincide with traffic or search results should not worry you. It is an awesome thing to see your PR rise, but traffic is what really matters.

For pretty obvious reasons, nearly everyone who wants to improve traffic to his/her website is heavily involved in article marketing.

There are two keys, and two keys only, to a successful website…content and traffic (visitors). And, while traffic can come from many sources, the best traffic comes from organic listings in Google, Yahoo, and MSN.

To begin with, although it takes time and energy to build and optimize a site which ranks well in the search engines, the traffic your site receives from the search engines is free. If you advertise, it may cost you $5 or more to generate a visitor to your site. And, research has clearly revealed that visitors who reach you because they found your site in a Google or Yahoo search are far more likely to be buyers than those who come to you as a result of advertising. Four times as likely, in some studies.

In other words, because these visitors have gone to the trouble of searching for information related to the websites on which they wind up, they are more likely to buy, donate, request further information, add themselves to a newsletter mailing list, etc.

No wonder goal-oriented site owners dedicate so much time to ensuring good search engine rankings by conducting intensive link building campaigns. And, no wonder article writing is such a big part of those campaigns. There is no other method of obtaining as many good links as quickly. An article written and sent out in an hour or two today can result in hundreds of links…maybe more…in a few short weeks.

Almost always, for fairly obvious reasons, people write articles about the same subjects which are the themes of their websites. It just makes good sense.

The mistake they make all too often is that they do not write about anything else.

Website owners who choose to write only on one or a narrow range of topics will miss out on lots of potential links. By branching out a bit, their writing and their links can be far more widely published. I’m an education writer who already has thousands of links on education-related websites. But not everybody is interested in higher education, so my articles have reached a limited audience and my links appear primarily on specialized websites. By writing on unrelated but popular topics, like this one, I can reach whole new audiences and earn links on countless more websites.

Do write about the subject(s) of your website(s). That’s how you’ll get links which will do the most to boost your search engine rankings for the keywords that can bring you the most targeted traffic. But, don’t make mistake #1 of article writers…don’t limit your range of topics. Every few weeks, choose a popular topic…one with mass appeal…and write on it. The new audiences such articles can help you reach, and the increase in links you will gain will give your website a big boost.