While live TV still represents the bulk of video viewing, on-demand, online viewing has made a significant dent, with consumption increasing four-fold in 2013. Meanwhile, advertisers are finding video to be extremely effective, and publishers are seizing this lucrative new revenue opportunity, resulting in an almost-perfect storm…

But as we all know, no new thing is without its challenges, the twist being that those challenges are not what most of us expected them to be going into the NewFronts. Thanks to the pace of technology, we may have leap-frogged the issues we faced last year and instead find ourselves up against new ones. #firstworld #innovation #technologyproblems…

Up till now, the digital video industry has reluctantly conceded that it must go backwards before it can go forwards: we must speak in the “reach and ratings” language of old-guard TV, in order to be considered seriously, even if it means ignoring the rich interactivity that digital has to offer.

And on the face of it, the digital NewFronts were about level-setting and gaining the respect afforded to broadcast prime time content: Hulu actually called their NewFront an Upfront; Crackle called itself a digital TV network able to both create and distribute its own content; Google offered super-premium quality content through Google Preferred; all touted common metric offerings; all paraded original content; all offered audience demo buying…

But in the end these details were drowned out by three things: the overwhelming over-supply of premium content; the resulting need to somehow make sense of it all; and in the same breath a potential answer in the ability for technology to take audience-based buying to the next level.

We were exposed to a torrent of new premium programming, from originals such as AOL’s Connected, to Yahoo’s lineup of original lifestyle and comedy shows, to vast networks which aggregate premium content from elsewhere. Even Conde Nast, considered to be late to the online video game was doing the network thing, touting “billions” of views. As one executive at the Fox upfront put it: “in order to break out you have to be somebody’s favorite show.”

But there is simply far too much supply and competition out there for that to be the goal. Cue advanced “programmatic” audience buying which is not as much about the context as it is about the user you are reaching – though within the realm of ‘premium video content’ which we know to be so effective.

Technology platforms such as AOL’s Adap.TV allow us to leapfrog simple TV-like demo based audience buying, to pinpoint precise audiences, in real time, not just on AOL owned properties but through its vast video network. This throws into question the lifeline of upfronts that are centered on programming. Just how many programs can we take in at once? (Just 7, according to countless psychological experiments…)We now find ourselves at a point where consolidation is necessary, and the way to achieve that is via the networks which can identify the people we want to reach amidst an untenable stream of supply. Ultimately there are signs that we need a fundamental shift from a programming upfront to an audience upfront…

But where’s the fun in that? We may need to look to deeper digitally-driven innovations such as Crackle’s compelling promise of “integrated brand experience for the price of media” which opens the door to a new world of branded entertainment; or genuinely interactive storytelling such as Microsoft’s ambitious Possibilia.