Yesterday Joost announced that it has fired its CEO and will focus on the crowded White Label player market. This segment is the most lucrative space to be in an online video market in which costs are high and consumers are loathe to pay. But as Yahoo!’s ditching of Maven on the same day shows, a high profile client list isn’t enough.

To succeed companies focused on this model must really behave like agencies, focused on delivering exceptional service and high measurable ROI for clients while keeping their costs low, a tricky thing when measurable success means more eyeballs and the CPMs for online video in most cases aren’t sufficient to cover the distribution costs let alone the cost of player development. (Unless, that is, you’re willing to use Silverlight in which case Microsoft has some money for you).

So for Joost to succeed they need to be able to do at least one of several things very well:

1. Provide a best-in-class player interface; Joost’s key selling point throughout its history (aside from P2P which flopped) has been its design, like it or hate it they have always been leaders in creating an innovative player interface, but it has come at a cost. Joost will need to be able to create innovative user experiences at low cost and be nimble enough to keep adapting to changes in technology with less staff.

2. Strengthen relationships with major partners; Joost has received funding and support from some major media companies and done content deals, mostly small with a slew of others. Joost needs these companies as partners if they are going to succeed. A major deal with one top tier media company could be enough to keep the company running, better yet they could get bought.

3. Control distribution costs; Without being able to do this no online video player solution will be able to offer worthwhile value to its partners. An innovative player solution isn’t enough, that’s what killed Maven. It needs to be low-cost

4. Provide value to advertisers; If consumers aren’t going to pay for content they’re going to need to watch ads, the player must be designed to deliver maximum value for advertisers without putting off users.

To name just a few, the list of competitors in the white label online video market now includes Brightcove, PermissionTV, Kaltura, KickApps, Castfire, The Feedroom, Magnify, Ooyala and Fliqz All of these companies must focus on becoming best-in-class in at least one of these key areas to differentiate themselves and be successful.

No surprise we saw record numbers for online video viewing during yesterday’s Inauguration. But while it was a banner day in terms of traffic and innovation, it also showcased the utter inability of media to monetize the massive amount of video being delivered.

From my personal experience, just about every site appeared to run into issues between 11:45 AM when Akamai reported peak traffic of 5.4 million visitors per minute for news traffic and 12:15 PM when Akamai served more than 7 million peak concurrent streams suggesting there may have been some backbone scalability issues.

That said, the numbers are no less impressive. CNN’s Facebook integration offered maybe the best online video experience I have maybe ever had. Not because of the quality, which even aided by Octoshape’s P2P app dropped several times, but because of the social viewing experience which really showcased the power and potential of online video as compared with traditional television.

Facebook saw an unprecedented peak of 8,500 status updates per minute at around 12:15, thanks to the CNN partnership, prompting one of my friends to wonder if this is the end of twitter. (In Twitter’s defense it held up very well, and Deep Focus’s Tweet The Inauguration offered a great digital companion for those watching on broadcast TV.

Qualitywise, the Move Networks powered CBS affiliate player offered the best experience, with multiple HD streams though CBS admittedly had some issues at peak times.

The field offered relatively generic players for streaming television coverage so there’s not all that much to say about them other than hopefully they figure out how to monetize this soon.

The $25k branding integration B&C reports Sony Pictures paid Hulu to run pre-roll for Paul Blart: Mall Cop against the inauguration probably didn’t do much to cover the cost of content delivery. Sites running only pre-roll against hours long streams are losing money the longer their viewers watch.

In case you haven’t clicked on every link in our blogroll (but why haven’t you?), head on over to Mark Glaser’s MediaShift blog. Mark spoke to a number of industry leaders about the state of online video advertising, and I must say that its one of the most balanced pieces you’ll get to read.

But if you absolutely refuse to read anything about online video except us, here’s what I had to say:

Probably the biggest mistake people make is in equating professional, studio-quality videos with the more amateur content that dominates video-sharing sites.

Yep. Some content just isn’t monetizable. Go figure. In case you need a refresher, pre-roll isn’t bad. Poorly placed pre-roll is. Remember the covenant! And more importantly, remember not to piss off Steve Hall.

In case you couldn’t make it, here’s what you missed. Presenters included Hulu’s Kevin McGurn, Move Networks’ Bob Bryson, Boxee’s Avner Ronen, MediaMerx’s Tejpaul Bhatia,and Matt Cutler from Visible Measures.

There are lots of cool companies, technologies and ad formats out there. But without metrics, “cool” ain’t worth much. So who is helping people figure out just how cool their ads are? Visible Measures is one of those companies. I’ve had the pleasure of chatting about the industry, and not the industry, with Matt Cutler, Visible Measures’ vice president of marketing & analytics, at the past few trade shows. Beet.TV grabbed a few minutes of Matt’s time at OMMA Video earlier this week, and let the MIT grad explain what’s behind all this engagement and metrics stuff. Watch……