In a week that saw more companies shedding jobs and packing it in for the recession, there was also a lot of positive including news of digital syndication deals designed to push more content to more screens.

I may be a contrarian, but I’m looking forward to the “Internet Winter.” The constriction of available capital should force companies to focus on revenue and refining business models Here’s a roundup of what we saw this week:

• ESPN’s John Skipper announced at EconSports that ESPN.com will launch a redesigned site in January and expects to generate 2 Billion video views in 2009.

• MLBAM CEO Bob Bowman had some interesting things to say about online video subscription models and MLB’s digital licensing philosophy and opening up to signing more digital distribution deals. “You’re seeing a loosening up. In the ESPN deal, we gave them a lot more content than we did before that, I think you’ll see a lot more leagues do more of that.”

• American Business Media’s Gordon Hughes said that its members’ revenue from print dropped from 48% in 2000 to 38% in 2008 and said that streaming media “has become a new robust revenue stream.” CNBC meanwhile has nearly 200,000 users across its enterprise and consumer subscription online video services.

• From DPAC II: Tremor Media’s Randy Kilgore says “Pre-roll has gone full cycle. It got its bad rap, and now its come back and is very popular.” But “Standard metrics is still key” says Sean Finnegan of Starcom Mediavest.

• Revision3 and 60Frames made layoffs joining Seesmic, ManiaTV, and a growing list of online video startups that are tightening their belts. Notably missing from the list is Next New Networks which got $15 million in funding just in time.

• Online video technology firm Clearleap has secured 3.3 million in venture debt financing from Silicon Valley Bank. The Clearleap platform is designed to deliver online video content to the TV, most likely in the form of yet another set top box.

• Netflix will syndicate content to TiVo boxes, following the announcement last week that it would deliver content to Samsung Blu-Ray players, and earlier announcements about Roku and xBox LIVE.

• Strike.TV, formed during the WGA strike late last year launched this week at Digital Hollywood. The digital network debuted 10 original series with professional production values and Hollywood talent. Content is available in HD delivered by BitGravity. Check out Global Warming featuring Aasaf Mandvi (The Daily Show) and Kristin Wiig of SNL and Knocked up fame below.

Whew. Busy week. Don’t forget to turn back the clock on Sunday.

In a sign that Google is becoming just another mainstream media giant, the Wall Street Journal today reports that YouTube under pressure to increase revenue is considering adding pre and post roll ads.

As NTV points out this is a pretty major reversal, but someone has to start paying for all that bandwidth and clearly overlays aren’t doing the trick. On the upside, this should finally present a large enough incentive for agencies to begin creating 15-second and shorter pre-rolls tailored to the video snacking audience.

Today, ad network Burst Media put out their latest issue of their newsletter, and in it, they bashed pre-roll with some pretty nasty looking data.

Once again, we’re presented with a bunch of charts and graphs and data points on why pre-roll sucks. But once again, we have no idea about the content that was used in the study.

Bad News: Most Stop Watching Video Content If An Ad Shows, Or Worse
Among respondents, one-half (50.7%) stop watching an online video once they encounter an in-stream advertisement.

Why is this even remotely interesting when you don’t know what kind of content the user was looking to watch? Answer - it isn’t. Users that abandon watching a “user initiated” video clip because they see the start of an ad simply don’t care about watching that video.

Would it have been worth it if they knew it was only a 5-second ad? I bet it would be. What if it were exclusive video? What if you desperately needed to hear about that breaking news story?

I am, again, on yet another rant about unmonetizable content. If the success of your business depends on running a pre-roll ad in front of “Man Lights Fart on Fire,” then you need to reconsider your business model. Fun to watch? Sure. Good business? Not even close.

Can we please stop bashing pre-roll? Can we please stop pumping out research that tells us that people don’t like advertising? Can we please talk about this powerful, exciting and effective medium like the complicated and layered business that it is? Size of the video player, quality of content, type of content, length of content — all factors that are continuously left out of research, but desperately need to be factored in to media planning. There are no simple answers, so lets stop looking for them. Lets start working on some in-depth analysis that (gasp) may be over the head of a 24 year old media planner.

Yes, it is hard to measure so many factors in any one study. But without it, we will continuously discover the same thing. Kids like music and entertainment, news is the most popular video category, and nobody likes ads.

B.F.D.

In a post on his blog yesterday, Jupiter analyst Nate Elliott points us towards a site that is doing pre-roll right.

First let me say that I’m a long time fan of Nate’s and his POV on both the online advertising and digital home markets. He gets it. Second, lets point you towards Rochester’s WHAM channel 13, who Nate believes is doing pre-roll better than most.

The site keeps the ads short (all are under 15 seconds), they rotate through advertisers so users don’t see the same ad several times in a row, and they run companion banners for each pre-roll advertiser. They even help their advertisers design custom video ads for use online (in one pre-roll ad, the spokesperson points to the companion banner and says “click here” — corny, but probably effective). The only thing they don’t do well is limit frequency: there’s a pre-roll ad in front of every single clip.

Head on over to Nate’s blog and read the rest of his entries. See why I’m a fan of his, and let us know what you think.