Who wins and who loses in the burgeoning world of online video? The conclusion of Thursday’s Advertising Week 2014 panel “Advertising’s Gold Rush: Online Video” seemed to be: We’ll see.

Moderated by Shalini Ramachandran, media reporter for The Wall Street Journal, the panel included several people who are trying to figure out the answer to that question: Steve Mandala, executive vide president for Univision, Doug Bandes, vice president of sales at comedy site Above Average and Jon Patricof, president and chief operating officer of Tribeca Enterprises.

Ramachandran asked the group who will make real money in the online video landscape. “The ones that win are the ones who control great content. If you are creating, producing and distributing great content, you will win,” Mandala answered definitively.

Bandes, the only Web-first panelist, believes that while content is key, the secret to securing advertising may be more sharing based.

“Collaboration and the willingness to share and put that content on other platforms, is part of it. To break through the clutter you have to work with partners,” he told the audience.

The TV ad market has gone a bit “soft,” Ramanchandra posited, but the panel agreed that those dollars are not going directly to digital — they are being held on to by companies who are waiting to see for themselves what is next.

Advertisers are eagerly seeking the next shiny new thing, and that’s encouraged each of the panelists’ companies to take some chances.

Tribeca’s Patricof used the example of Tribeca teaming with Vine for its #6SECFILMS competition, which challenged filmmakers to create Vine clips in categories such as drama, comedy and animation, as an example of their risk-taking. That also spoke to Bandes’ notion that partnerships plays a part in online content creators’ strategy to court advertisers.

“We have to work in the places where we see the most vibrant communities, but was a big risk,” Patricof said, referring to their Vine film competition from 2013.

The panelists weighed everything from pre-roll to native advertising and the benefits of Web-only video as well as crossing back to broadcast. It became clear that as of yet, there is no obvious way to win in the world of online video.

The closest the panelists came to a consensus was that engagement, no matter how it’s achieved, is key.

“The next twelve months will be about how to create interactivity and create deep emotional connections,” Patricof said.

Mandala agreed. “You have to get people engaged and when you can get them engaged with creative content and attach advertising to it, you win.”

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