There is no doubt that we’ll look back on 2006 as the Year of Web Video, as it’s quite clear a tipping point is being reached in web video viewership.  A magic confluence of broadband connectivity (which is becoming nearly universal), new enabling technologies, critical mass of content, and habituated viewers have all come together this year.  Literally hundreds of millions of video clips are being viewed every single day, both through public-domain self-publishing video services like YouTube and Google Video, through aggregated services from iTunes to CollegeFair.tv, and through dedicated websites such as BoomersTV (one of our clients) and DigiNovations’ own online portfolio.

Mark my words, by the end of this year video on the web will be the most talked-about publishing trend of the year, eclipsing PodCasts and even MySpace as the web’s most exciting new communications medium.

Each of these areas — self-publishing, aggregated services, and dedicated websites — is seeing its own new tools and trends.  And each is advancing very, very rapidly this year.

In self-publishing, YouTube has emerged from nowhere to become the #1 most visited destination on the web.  And it’s accomplished this In seven months.  Two weeks ago, YouTube announced that it has passed the 100 million video clip viewings per day level, and Neilsen/NetRatings says YouTube served 12.8 million unique visitors during the week ending July 16th, and grew 75% per week in July!

The sudden emergence of YouTube suggests strongly that web video has gone mainstream, but its real significance to marketers is not necessarily that of a video publishing platform.  After all, the YouTube environment is like a scene from the Wild West — chaotic in a way that is both delicious and scary.  It’s cheap (actually free), connected to a search and referral engine, and relatively easy to use.  It’s great for viral content — especially that which is short, funny, and quirky.

But what if you’ve got a serious message that you want to be part of a total experience for your customers or prospects?  What if you want to blend text and video and customer data collection…and track the results?  What if you need to protect the content rather than throw it out into an environment where copyrights and other intellectual property rights are largely ignored and sometimes outright abused?  Then YouTube is not for you.  That’s where a new set of very interesting publishing tools come in.

Leading the way in these new video publishing tools is Brightcove, a Cambridge-based startup created by the former top tech guru at Macromedia (creators of Flash).  With Brightcove, you can create whole channels of video programming, such as a channel DigiNovations has created for the Museum of Science and another channel, BoomersTV, which one of our clients, Boomer Media Properties, launched this week.

There’s much to talk about when considering whether and how to build these channels.  I’ll save that for a future VideoAdvisory entry, probably in the next few days.

Suffice to say, though, that the tipping point is upon us, and web video is destined to become a part of our culture very, very quickly.  And that means that every company, institution, and organization needs to start thinking now about how to harness the energy around this cultural event.  For sooner or later, we’ll face the question: “What’s on YOUR channel?”