• by Daisy Whitney , Op-Ed Contributor, January 3, 2012

After a robust 2011, online video advertising should enjoy yet another year of rapid growth. eMarketer said online video ad spending should jump 40% this year to reach $3.1 billion. That’s after a 52% rise in 2011, and the boost will continue to be powered by pre-roll ads.

The dominant video formats this year will be pre-roll and mobile video, eMarketer said, citing results from a recent Break Media study finding that 63% of advertisers plan to buy pre-roll ads this year, about the same as in 2011. About 55% plan to use mobile video ads, up from 39% last year. Other popular formats are in-banner video ads with 53% of marketers planning to use them this year, down from 59% last year, and banner ads at 47%, the same as last year. Interestingly, advertisers are also keen on connected TV ads with about one-quarter saying they’ll use them this year, up significantly from 12% in 2011.

eMarketer said about 169 million people, or 71% of US internet users, will watch online video each month by the end of 2012.

In other video year-end wraps, Nielsen released its list of top 10 U.S. destinations for video. Not surprisingly, YouTube topped the charts with 111 million unique video viewers per month, followed by VEVO at more than 34 million, and Facebook at nearly 30 million. Rounding out the top five were Yahoo with 25 million and MSN at more than 16 million. Also hitting the top 10 were AOL, Hulu, CollegeHumor, CNN and Netflix.