Disney CEO Robert Iger just wrapped up the morning keynote in conversation with Business Week’s John Byrne at the McGraw Hill Media Summit. Iger said Disney will generate a billion dollars in digital revenue this year, and spoke in depth about the use of new media to reach consumers more effectively.

On The role of technology:

• Technology does two things: It enables you to make your content experience better and enables you to distribute more broadly and more effectively.
• Being on the cutting edge of technology…being on a new platform like iTunes really improves relevance.
• Consumers are using technology…it’s about embracing consumers, you have to use technology to do that.

On Old vs. New Media

• Figuring out how to move content onto new media platforms…is probably the most important thing we can do.
• Having [Steve Jobs] kind of expertise, we’re very very fortunate…He and I have had a lot of really important discussions on the future of technology”
• First instinct is [new media will] make our business more difficult… fragment, erode the audience. Is it going to be a challenge? Sure there’s always going to be a challenge…we’re going to use technology to make our product better.
• Television is still a very powerful medium, you denigrate it by calling it old but you watch in HD that’s not an old media, that’s a new media experience. My five year old son doesn’t look at it as old media and new media, it’s all media to him.
• Introduce [content] to the world on a more traditional platform and then use new media to add more dimension to it. Watching on the iPhne is not as good an experience as watching on a 50 inch screen TV, but more content in more places where they can engage is a good thing.
• Over 4 million movies sold online in a year and a half, pales in comparison to the number of DVD sales. 40-50 million episodes sold, pales in comparison to the number streamed online.
• I think over the long run there will be some shift especially when it comes to filmed entertainment…you’re not going to see hard goods go away,…but electronic distribution will grow. Convergence will spur more adoption, more consumption.

On Social Networking:

• “Can’t think of social media as a gen x or a gen y phenomenon. Kids are using…broadband enabled computers for entertainment much more than the generation before them.”
• The computer will become a primary source of entertainment: they go online to be entertained.
• “I have a facebook page and I have two friends…good luck finding me, I have a variety of aliases”
• Investment in Club Penguin a virtual world for kids, working on a virtual world for Cars.
• “I think it’s important for executives to experience some of this, we spend a lot of time engaging with each other on new platforms because that’s what the consumer’s doing, it’s a lot of fun too.”

If you want to get into the head of one of online video’s (and online advertising in general) biggest brains, check out the latest DishyMix podcast from Susan Bratton. This week, she interviews Adam Gerber, CMO of Quantcast, an audience measurement company.

Adam was previously at Brightcove as their Vice President for Advertising Products and Strategy and is one of the smartest and most passionate people about online video.

Here’s what Susan had to say about Adam:

Adam Gerber has been a leader in the digital marketing space since it’s inception. He’s been an evangelist, a pioneer, spending solid budgets on digital media on behalf of his blue chip clients. He’s a believer. He’s amazingly smart. He’s a great man and you’ll enjoy knowing him better in this entertaining and informational interview. You’ll grow. You’ll learn. Enjoy!

For those of you who don’t know, DishyMix is a podcast featuring “Juicy Interviews with Famous Internet and Media People”, and hosted by Susan Bratton, in her own right a very famous internet and media person. We industry folks dig her…a lot. She is also the Chair Emeritus of ad:tech Expositions, the leading conference for digital marketers. She’s one of those people that everyone wants to know, and says they do. But thats not enough. You want her - NEED her - to know you. (Editorial Note: Not pandering. Susan and I know each other and have mutual friends. In fact, I was discussed in a recent DishyMix podcast. I just respect her that much and her hubby is cool, too. He invented Rhapsody, my personal choice for online music subscription services.)

So give a listen over the long weekend. And catch up on some of her previous podcasts while you’re there. Hell, its a long weekend. You don’t want to spend it all on YouTube.

Barely three months after being named EVP-Global Advertising Strategy for AOL’s Platform-A, Dave Morgan is leaving AOL, according to PaidContent.

Dave Morgan sold behavioral targeting company Tacoda to AOL for $275 million in September. Morgan also founded RealMedia, which became 247 Real Media and was sold to WPP for almost $650 million.

This in light of revived talks between AOL and Yahoo, after Yahoo rebuked Microsoft’s $44 billion offer to acquire the portal.

More as details emerge, but no doubt, its good to be Dave Morgan. Not so much for AOL.

Local is finally beginning to make waves. Last week, I had the opportunity to sit down with Levy Cohen, CEO of startup Collarity, the company powering community-based search for FOX local TV sites.

Collarity’s search technology works by tapping into the inherent behavioral similarities among users. Collarity takes information from all users of a site to segment the audience into very specific micro-communities. Search then continuously improves and adjusts individual results based on the changing interests of a website’s numerous existing communities.

A search for “New England” on MyFoxNewYork.com for example shows that New Yorkers are concerned with New England weather and of course the Giants. LA residents are more interested in Britney and they tend to be Pats fans. As users spend more time on a site search results adapt to their history.

By dividing users into interest groups based on what they have viewed and where they have spent time on a website, Collarity is able to target users with relavent advertising, and increase page views and CPM rates. Cohen said they have seen conversion rates on partner sites rise by 40%-100%.

As the content universe expands, navigation will continue to grow in importance. The inherent social networks that underlie every website are an incredibly powerful tool for improving the filter through which information is passed. By taking advantage of this Collarity offers a win-win for both users and content producers.

There are a lot of challenges to delivering content online, but measurement is an often overlooked problem. Last year, the IAB challenged ComScore and Nielsen NetRatings to submit to a third party audit, and competition in the online video market continues to prompt debates about the best way to measure internet usage.

On a FutureTV panel today, Veoh President Dimitry Shapiro lashed out at what he sees as major inaccuracies, saying bluntly “ComScore measurements suck” and citing ComScore traffic numbers that he said were far below those of Veoh’s server logs, a discrepancy Veoh has been fighting since June.

ComScore, which relies on panels to judge online viewership insists that its numbers are at least as reliable as other forms of measurement due to issues like cookie deletion.

As more content moves online and the value of the digital media market grows, the importance of accurate metrics and industry-wide measurement standards will continue to increase.

Quantcast, an open Internet ratings service, has announced that it raised $20 million in second-round venture financing from Founders Fund and Polaris Venture Partners. Their service, which provides audience profile data to publishers, is, for now, is free to anyone to use.

In November, Quantcast named Adam Gerber their Chief Marketing Officer.

Congrats to long time OVW friend Julian Zilberbrand, who was recently promoted to Vice President, Group Director for Technology and Ad Operations at Mediavest Digital.

Julian is one of the most insightful folks in the business. This is what Julian told MediaPost back in 2004, when he was a product specialist for rich media provider, Eyeblaster:

Q: What’s the most divisive online policy issue right now?
JZ: There are a lot of different ways to use video, and people haven’t decided the best way to use video yet. … People aren’t sure about the amount of time a video ad should play. The attention span for online users is shorter than that of someone watching TV.

People should start thinking about creating footage for the Web. It’s just a matter of understanding that you have the ability and choice and option to do it all. The biggest challenge is getting them to try it.

Right on the money, JZ. Congrats on a well deserved promotion.

We kid you not. In quick response to their board of directors abandoning ship, Roo Media Group named Kaleil Isaza Tuzman, currently the CEO of JumpTV, their new CEO and Chairman.

According to the press release, Tuzman and his KIT Capital Ltd. has been granted the right to purchase up to 51% of the preferred class of shares in the Company at US$0.38 per share. KIT Capital has the option to invest up to US$5 million in common shares of the Company at US$0.16 per share, a 15% premium to the closing price yesterday, December 18th, 2007.

Tuzman is probably best remembered to layfolks as the star of the 2001 documentary, “StartUp.com,” a film about life in the first dot-com bubble and their company, GovWorks.com, which burned through nearly $60 million in 18 months.

In related news, JumpTV Inc. (AIM: JTV) announced that it had bought back 25,000 common shares at an average price of Cdn$2.20 per share.

Days like this make me miss one of the staple websites of the first dot-com bubble, FuckedCompany. I can’t help but imagine that Roo Media would be on the top of the list. I’m still baffled by the inner workings of the online video syndicator, but this is a roller coaster ride that everyone seems to want to get off.

Today, four members of the Board of Directors resigned. Three of them were named to the board on May 30th of this year.

Before joining the board at Roo, Simon Bax was Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at Pixar Animation Studios; Stephen Palley is Executive Director of Pali Capital; Scott Ackerman is a partner at Wagner, Francis, Richman & Ackerman; and Doug Chertok is a Senior Managing Director at Hudson Ventures.

The resignation of these four directors leaves only two directors on the board: Robert Petty and Robin Smyth, the company’s Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer, respectively. As I write, Roo’s stock has hit a new 52-week (and possible all-time) low of $.14.

Whats going on over there? And when is News Corp going to step in to protect their strategic investment?

According to an article in today’s Times Union, two former top execs of Wurld Media have been indicted on a number of charges ranging from misdemeanor failure to pay benefits to felony grand larceny and money laundering.

Gregory Kerber, former Chief Executive and Richard Saxton, former financial officer were each arraigned on nine charges.

Assets of Wurld Media, an online music and video file-sharing company, were sold to ROO Media for $4.3 million in in July, however most of the alleged charges took place before that deal was signed.

According to Mediapost, Roo bought “strategic P2P assets of Wurld Media,” for $4.3 million, consisting of $3.2 million in cash and the issuance of approximately 655,000 shares of ROO common stock.

While it doesn’t appear (at this point) that there’s anything for Roo to be concerned with here, they certainly don’t need any negative publicity or associations while they struggle to turn things around. Last month they reported net operating loss of approximately $8.5 million in the third quarter of 2007.