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I first heard the phrase “Syndicated Video Economy” while eating lunch with Will Richmond, the founder of VideoNuze.  We were discussing how the distributed power of the Web would eventually produce many large online video businesses. While this turned out be true,  a black market has also emerged –  as in all big industries.

The syndicated video black market is dominated by a small number of video syndication firms, ad networks and tier-three publishers, all of which appear to be both codependent and increasingly unscrupulous.  I was disappointed over the weekend to receive an email from one of our lead engineers that demonstrated a cleverly hidden ad tactic previously seen only in the display world.

In this black market example, I was shocked to see not one, but six publisher sites appearing in invisible 1×1 pixels hidden behind a banner ad, serving video from a video syndication firm and multiple video ads from Coke, Verizon and others served by two video ad networks.

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