From the World of Online Video: News on Advertising, Picture Quality

- Google seems determined to play a big role in the business of inserting ads into online video. I covered an announcement they're making today in Variety. From the story:

"Video units" -- essentially Internet video players that can be integrated into a website -- will display two different kinds of advertising, both pegged to the content of the site and the subject matter of the video itself. Content in the players will come from YouTube, the video-hosting service Google bought last year for $1.65 billion. The resulting revenue will be split three ways, with the site owner, content owner and Google all taking a slice.

The video units are part of Google's AdSense advertising network, which generates a big chunk of the company's revenues, $1.35 billion in the second quarter alone.

Google had earlier begun placing video ads on the thousands of sites that are part of the AdSense network, and YouTube recently began to test ads that played during its videos.

- And Brightcove has announced that it is working with BitTorrent, the peer-to-peer distribution system, to improve the image quality of its videos. From the Forbes piece:

"It's going to be a very significant shift," contends [Brightcove VP Adam] Berrey. " We've seen an explosive growth in short-form video clips, and this will allow longer format files as well. It's definitely a significant step in the evolution of Internet TV."

The Journal's story about the Brightcove deal also mentions a new company called Move Networks, which is also working to improve video quality. Peter Grant writes:

Move Networks, based in American Fork, Utah, has developed a technology that streams video at the fastest rate possible based on the user's computer, broadband connection and traffic on the network. Move Networks and its customers also are able to deliver high picture quality because content is stored on numerous servers throughout the country rather than at one central location.