Online video viewing continues to surge, but the ad dollars flowing into the space still aren’t scaling accordingly. Panelists at the Reinventing Advertising Conference @ CES trotted out well-worn reasons for that imbalance: lack of standard metrics; high volume of low-quality content; building the right amount of reach, etc. But Brian Terkelsen, EVP and managing director at MediaVest’s connectivetissue, (pictured) avoided the hand-wringing and laid it on the line: “Advertisers aren’t being aggressive enough in general—they helped grow TV to where it is now, so I think it’s partly up to them to drive video. If we don’t challenge the industry to do things differently, we’re screwed.”

BitGravity CEO Perry Wu said time was already up for many of the smaller online video development and distribution studios: “We work with hundreds of content companies and to be honest, many of them won’t survive. Indie sites that have premium news or sports content and a targeted audience can prove that they’re valuable to advertisers—but some of the broad, more generalized companies will have a harder time.”

More after the jump...