If the race between the Soviet Union and the United States to get the first man in space was coined "the Space Race," perhaps we should call Google and Microsoft's race to plaster the digital frontier with ads "the AdSpace Race." This week, Microsoft purchased YuMe , the largest provider of online video ads on the web. YuMe represents more than 500 million streams each month and reaches more than 68% of the total US online population )more than 120M uniques(.

Here's a shocker-the majority of shows on TV are boring and cable is expensive. It's no wonder then that consumption of online video has gone up significantly as less and less people watch TV.  Ipsos MediaCT conducted a study involving 1,102 early adopters who currently stream and download video online. From February 2007 to February 2008, video consumption from television went down 7 percent in just one year among this group.