Matt Prohaska is a true veteran of the digital sales and marketing business. He served as vice president of North American sales, account management, for AOL, where he led a 150-person sales team that managed over $1 billion in total annual revenue.  He also drove many company-wide business initiatives improving process, systems, policy and structure across a number of departments. As of this week he is CEO of Smartclip, which is part of Smartclip AG, the largest video advertising network in Europe. Smartclip says it will offer advertisers a blend of innovative ad formats, exclusive inventory including social media, reach partnerships and extensive tracking resources. We caught up with him during his first week on the job.

Digiday: Creatively, what ad units or specific executions should brands consider in online video?

Prohaska: I hope this doesn't sound like a cop-out, but brands should really consider the units and specs that best fit the marketing objectives of the brand. We will make individual recommendations to marketers of course, which often includes our unique formats like SmartStitial that we developed with our partner Eyewonder. Sight/sound/motion usually allows for a better story to tell and enhanced consumer engagement, as our research has shown in Europe already (coming soon to U.S.). So instead of pigeon-holing clients to work in just one format or one unit, we aim for maximum flexibility. There can always be spec issues with content partners (like with all video ad nets) but that is one of many reasons we are more selective with who we partner with on the publisher side. Combining great creative with appropriate targeting, context, and reach/frequency parameters tends to work best.

Digiday: Technically, are there still challenges?

Prohaska: No doubt, industry-wide, but we see it getting better literally by the week. Buying/trafficking/launching digital video campaigns is not as easy as broadcast TV...yet. The IAB has worked hard to establish VAST/VPAID and we applaud their efforts and the publishers/networks/agencies/marketers that worked with them. Their announcement reminded me of when we in the industry released the first set of banner specs in the late '90s - always the balance of standardization vs. customization among publishers, networks, and advertisers. So it requires a little getting in the weeds to ensure proper delivery/tracking, as not every publisher is VAST-compliant yet, but it's well worth the time investment, and it remains our job to minimize that time needed from our publisher and advertiser partners while still developing unique formats and platforms.

Digiday: Give us three advantages online video ads will have over current display models.

Prohaska: One, much better consumer engagement metrics. I think most reasons creative directors at top agencies and brand managers still value broadcast TV over developing online creative and those go away with online video. Through our Eyewonder partnership, we track over 50 points of engagement and provide context for our clients to help determine a campaign's success level.

Two, improved reach and frequency control, as long as marketers are not buying the same inventory from seven ad networks, repping the same sites/placements (why we favor striking deeper, more valuable, exclusive content partnerships), the ability to truly calculate a GRP with full SOV on-screen is a dramatic 1-2.

Finally, as a web consumer, I haven't seen a "punch the monkey" video ad yet, and hopefully never will, given the attention online video can command, as long as we all keep respecting the consumer.

And in addition, I have started to argue, and have heard many in the research community agree, that online video and display are the same thing - it's just a different creative execution. It helps us track spending share when firms break out ad dollars with display/rich media/video. But we are finding success working with agencies delivering against "display" budgets and goals. No need to put us in the non-display bucket just because we can deliver a better consumer and advertiser experience.

Digiday: What's Smartclip's value prop? What will differentiate it from other online video ad networks and video ad advisers?

Prohaska: For advertisers, our goal is to remove barriers/negative perceptions of display/video ad nets today in North America by offering exclusive content partnerships/inventory, unique formats, and real global reach with solid targeting. For content providers (site publishers, mobile platforms, game consoles, TV OEMs, our goal is to remove the same stigma and treat them the way they deserve, not as one partner in 2,000 whose inventory gets commoditized, but provide a valuable marketing arena and audience.  Fortunately, we have two years of success in Europe as the top video ad net, in reach and revenue, to begin demonstrating this more to advertisers and publishers here.

Digiday: You've been in this business a long time with a lot of different companies. Try to predict the place online video ads will have in one year in terms of market share, importance and brand impact.

Prohaska: Caveat: today is day 10 on the job for me. But after seeing the trends inside and outside AOL while there the past three years, and spending lots of time recently with our European team and partners learning plenty about the amazing successes we've had in the EU, I have quickly seen there are two different markets globally in online video advertising. (By the way,  about 50 percent of clients' spend with us in Germany the past year or so originally came from "national TV" budgets). Focusing on U.S. predictions, in one year, online video will double in market share from 2009, agencies with TV-only and online-only media/creative teams will start to work together more on digital video campaigns (on 5+ different screens) and brands will see more real performance metrics around consumer impact to start asking their agency media planners to change the slices of their 2011 spend pie. I am personally thrilled to be in a space that is very real with great impact today and where we at Smartclip can have second-mover advantage in North America, while leveraging our incredible successes in Europe.