Undeniably, video is a key element of the future of advertising on the internet. "Advertisers are still trying to work out the best formats for video ads," says Piper Jaffray's Kessler. "It could be a 15-second overlay, like Google is working on, or a 30-second pre-roll campaign. It seems shorter is better; no one wants to watch a few minutes of commercials when you're watching a program online. But there is an opportunity to insert commercials within videos, and that's what the brand advertisers will start to adopt a bit more."

Yet the future contains more than new technology.

"I think it's going to focus around audience quality," says Tas of Sportgenic, speaking about both online advertisers and ad networks. "We've been focused on scale for a long time. Now we know scale is doable. We're now digging into the depths of being able to connect brands with specific audience demographics. We'll see that continue to evolve, so the advertiser can connect the right brands to the right people." Because of the elimination of waste through better targeting, Tas expects ROI to double within the year.

"The industry is not that old," says Chas Edwards, publisher and CRO of Federated Media. "As an industry, we've only taken a couple of runs at what online advertising can look like. We've been focused on the click. But now you have significant budgets and marketing experts who think differently than just the direct response metric. We're still in the early stages of imagining what brand advertising on the internet looks like and how we can measure success against that. So I don't think we've yet seen a lot of interesting brand executions online, but we're beginning to."