Digital Media Buzz > Tracking the Web Video Audience

Tracking the Web Video Audience

By Lauren Fritsky

It is still early in the game for Web video, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a growing space. About 150 million American Internet users watch about 14.5 billion videos a month, and average video lengths have increased to 3.4 minutes in the last year, according to comScore.

In January, Web video competed fiercely with TV when it came to watching the presidential inauguration: there were 37.8 million TV viewers and 70 million Web views.

With that growth in online video consumption, the need has arisen for accurate measurement of this segment of the Web audience to help direct advertising dollars to the right places. Web video audience measurement helps advertisers more accurately identify the viewers who are watching certain pieces of content so ads can be more targeted, says Chris Allen, online video expert for media agency Starcom USA. “The advertisers have been slower to get to the party. The content hasn’t been there — we’re starting to see budgets shift in the space,” he says. “Slowly but surely advertisers are starting to take note that consumption patterns are changing, and that to be effective, they need to think of it holistically, instead of being focused solely on TV.”

Video offerings have thus far come mostly in the form of short clips, because advertising dollars didn’t warrant the high delivery costs of longer ones. Better Internet access is allowing for better video viewing, which is leading to more long-form videos. “We find that people are using online video as a natural extension of other platforms for sports highlights, weather reports, entertainment bits,” Allen says. “Our clients are using it to drive awareness and see its impact on measures like brand recall and purchases intent.”

But unlike TV, which is measured by viewers, Web video is measured by views, something that can be inaccurate should people reload their pages or have a technical glitch that prevents them from watching the entire clip. Another issue to contend with is that there are many video players, so there is no single reporting metric available. That is why the Web video audience is best measured by interactions, Allen says.

“Clicks are not going to be the right metrics,” he says. “There are other services in the market place that allow enhanced tracking, click-through rates, time spent with part of the message, whether or not an individual actually rewound.”

Online video analytics company Visible Measures, for instance, offers software that can be integrated with online video players to collect moment-by-moment data on each user’s behavior. It can tell whether viewers watch certain parts of videos repeatedly or if they embed them in blogs.

Nielsen announced in July a panel to study audience measurement, including online video. The company is currently measuring Web video consumption with its VideoCensus product, which offers an analysis of the demographics and viewing habits of consumers by gathering data from both the users (panel measurements) and the websites themselves (server measurements).

“Due to the increased fragmentation of media consumption, it is important for advertisers, networks and content owners to understand where consumers are consuming content,” says a Nielsen spokesperson in an email. “Networks and broadcasters want to understand the Internet habits of TV viewers to understand the dynamics and behavior associated with simultaneous usage of both media. This allows advertisers and broadcasters to understand when and where to serve the appropriate content or advertising.”

Panache, which offers an ad-insertion platform for major media and entertainment companies, allows customers to measure audiences by putting markers in their videos so they can see how many people watch which part of video and what the drop-off rates are for ad avails and podcasts, says CEO Steve Robinson. “We want to run an experiment with long-form content with the same number of ads in pods and long-form to see if people stay engaged or drop off,” he added.

If online video is becoming more popular, does that mean it will someday surpass TV? Probably not, both Allen and Robinson says. Instead, it will remain just another option for viewing.

“It’s a substitute, not a replacement,” Robinson says. “If you’re all sitting in the living room watching TV, and two of the kids have their computers, they can watch something else. We’ll be able to access different shows on different devices depending on what we want to watch.”