I don’t know if anything puts a room to sleep more quickly than a lengthy discussion on metrics. In online video there is so much emerging technology being used that measurement is tricky to say the least.

But considering 75% of internet users are now watching web video tracking online response is also important. The following notes are broken down to the key points so as to keep you awake.

Aimee Irwin, Advertising.com

• Measurement needs to run across the entire range of consumer interactions with a brand. Pre-roll is an effective format. Click-through rates for on pre-roll are increased by companion banners.
• Re-purposed cut-down TV ad pre-roll performed about the same in terms of user interaction as longer :30 TV spots used as pre-rolls.
• Time measurement would be more effective if user activity during time active is considered.
• Continuous play video versus user initiated play video generates very different results - things like click-through rates then become more effective for measuring continuous play.

Carolyn Creekmore, Nielsen/NetRatings

• Measuring video online, like on TV should be done by day part. Sports performs well in the mornings. News is heavy during the day, Kids programming during the evening and weekends.
• Classification of the type of video playback (streaming / download / progressive download etc.) should be considered.
• Panel-based metrics provides good demographic info. Tagging content is good at getting granular data. Nielsen’s meter pulls these together to make the most sensible picture of what is going on.
• Fusion & Convergence - Fusing data for online video, on TV, other content locations to understand how it all links together.
• Time is the most consistent metric across all formats which makes it the most effective base.
• Panel measurement enables measurement of action far after viewing an online ad.

The bottom line here is that while we are moving toward standardization of online video metrics across formats and platforms, there’s still the question of how.

With so many ad-serving technologies based on many different ways of displaying information online it will be a while before the industry matures to a point where real standards can take effect.

The second panel of the day covered examples of successful use of online video in marketing campaigns. My notes:

Jeff Minsky, OMD

Doritos Super Bowl UGC contest - OMD received more than 1,000 user submissions and an ad that cost $12 to make was the winner. The campaign achieved 300 million impressions leading up to the Super Bowl and 600 million impressions week of Superbowl. The runner up ad was so popular that it ran during the super bowl as well, and the top five ran in ad rotation for the next month.


Above: The Winning Ad, also check out Doritos Snack Strong Productions

Nissan sponsorship of Heroes - In addition to TV product placement, limited-interruption sponsorship, online video component - exclusive sponsorship of online streaming. Live event component: concert series shown online through partnership with Yahoo! Music.

Ian Schafer, Deep Focus

John From Cincinnati - Deep focus created a website which portrays the alternate reality of the series. Allows users to interact, unlock content, add content as the show goes along. For users who want more interaction with the show, they can communicate online which adds to the television viewing experience.

Kickin it Old School - A flash based widget displays the trailer as well as additional content which is continually updated. All hosted at the agency so every interaction can be tracked.

Kickin it Old School - A flash based widget displays the trailer as well as additional content which is continually updated. All hosted at the agency so every interaction can be tracked.

Above: The Kickin’ it Old School Widget”

Dewars Scotch - Partnership with The Onion News Network, pre-roll and mid-roll ads. Creating an ad perfectly contextually suited for the content.

Taras Wayner, R/GA

Verizon Online tasked R/GA with creating a strategy to relay the cutting edge of what can be done online with broadband via Fios. Build credibility for Verizon as an entertainment provider in addition to a service provider.

Beatbox Mixer - Use the world’s best beatboxers to create your own mix and then share that with your friends.

Action Hero - Allows users to create their own action-hero movie based on customized catch phrases and character qualities. They can then share the two-minute movie by embedding it or e-mailing to their friends. In addition, people were able to re-cut the video for themselves using the original footage.

UPDATE: While the graphics and 3D animation are cool there’s no way to stop it from playing immediately so I removed the embedded player. (Nearly blew out my speakers one too many times)

Dorian Sweet, Tribal DDB

Mealstogether.com - A pilot interactive TV program for Clorox: Tribal created a scripted sitcom-style video with added layers of interactivity so that users can navigate the recipe site from the initial video interface into other pieces of content.

There is no separation between video and static content, everything works together as an integrated experience. At the same time every piece of content is individually accessible and can be deep linked to for easy sharing.

We’re live this morning from the Clickz Specifics Online Video Advertising conference. We just wrapped up the morning session on strategy (notes below), check back for updates throughout the day.

Conor Brady, Organic

What campaigns benefit from having an online component?

• Brands that want to differentiate their experience and build a story about a product or service. Not a sit-and watch entertainment experience.
• Should be relevant: online video should entertain and enable response.
• Consistent message across platforms, leverage unique capabilities of web.
• Motion Designers and technologists are now part of the creative team.
• Function before form: Architecture determines the shot list.
• Make it searchable, and allow customers to be c-creators download, “riff” and remix online content. User-generated content is not going to damage your brand if you respond to it.

An example is HBO Voyeur - an online only “brand piece” with many different online storylines which is very cool and will be used by HBO to get some press and buzz.

Rebecca Paoletti, Yahoo!

• 36%-38% of content is referral-based. Video search is a challenge across the board because of the metadata and the UI-functionality of finding video that people are looking for. Most video players are not optimized for search engines.

Troy Young, VideoEgg

• Internet is a fundamentally demand-driven medium. Not about viewership, about usage. Commercials that aren’t really entertaining, really targeted, really specific, and really helpful don’t go very far online.
• If you get it right you can move to the holy grail of engagement. It’s hard to standardize and measure - the amount of time spent, quality of experience, was it meaningful?
• Challenge to marketers - selling at much higher rates for much smaller audiences. Video takes time away from you. Marketers like pre-roll because it forces users to pay attention at the beginning, with a high possibility of engagement later on. But how to measure that action down the road.
• Video is expensive, huge shift of video consumption online. eggnetwork is taking videos and creating rich ways to generate engagement within videos. You can choose to interact with it, or close it and choose it later on the playlist.
• Experimenting with new formats (e.g. picture in picture window ad)
• It’s not about video content anymore it’s about interactivity blending with video seamlessly.

Check out Eggnetwork’s Examples.

I was about ten blocks away from that steam pipe explosion in New York this evening, at PR Newswire for Howard Greenstein’s Social Media Club event. I learned about the incident from a twitter comment and people with cell phone cameras wasted no time in capturing it for CNN’s i-Report and ABC’s i-CAUGHT (below).

When will someone create a user-generated news site that offers greater rewards for those who capture video of these events? As we have reported before users are already casting a wider net than traditional news media can.

JumpTV has expanded their exclusive content with the purchase of the broadband services unit of privately held XOS Technologies, a provider of live and on demand college sports online.

In recent months JumpTV, well known for their streaming of international television stations has ramped up their content offerings, acquiring online rights to stream the FIFA World Cup through 2014 and signing a deal with AOL to increase their distribution.

Users have the option of an ad-supported free version for most channels. More popular content such as live coverage the Israeli and Egyptian football leagues and the 2008 European soccer championships are offered on a subscription or pay-per-view basis at bitrates up to 1MBps.

Powered by AOL Video

Above: Kenyan channel KBC 1 streamed by JumpTV.

The sale allows XOS to unload a unit facing increasing competition as more companies enter the online video market leaving them to focus on their Coaching Solutions and Facilities Design & Integration groups, likely their most profitable business segments.

Sooner or later there is going to be a productivity study showing how much online video is actually consumed in the office. In an age of 10% time, it’s not surprising that people are watching in the workplace but a Nielsen/CTAM study out today highlights just how prevalent it is.

Despite all the talk of TV as a disrupted industry, the study showed that television ratings are “minimally, if at all, affected by broadband video viewing over the Internet.” When video is viewed online it is incremental and doesn’t significantly change normal viewing habits.

Then again, the release didn’t mention how old the respondents were, I would hazard to guess that it didn’t include (m)any in the under eighteen demo, for whom online video is something they grew up with.

The tipping point the report says will be when broadband content becomes widely available on the TV - that convergence point we talk so much about here. For now, I would imagine this incremental viewing is being consumed mostly in the office. I know I don’t have any extra time to watch at home, do you?

comScore today released their May Video Metrix report showing 75% of U.S. internet users watched an average of more than 2.5 hours of online video. No surprise that Google is still far and away the leader but when it comes to where content was viewed, it is still a very long tail.

   Property                Video Streams          Share (%) of
                                 (MM)              Video Streams
    Total Internet             8,357                  100.0%
    Google Sites               1,796                   21.5%
    Fox Interactive Media        680                    8.1%
    Yahoo! Sites                 387                    4.6%
    Viacom Digital               237                    2.8%
    Time Warner Network          185                    2.2%
    Microsoft Sites              171                    2.0%
    ABC.com                      100                    1.2%
    Disney Online                 84                    1.0%
    ESPN                          62                    0.7%
    NBC Universal                 58                    0.7%
    *Rankings based on video content sites; excludes video server networks

Google with 1.8 billion streams served in May and Fox Interactive Media with 680 million streams combined to make up about 30% of total U.S. streams served. The top 10 properties by quantity of streams make up only 44.8% of the total meaning that the majority of online video streams were viewed at sites which served less than 1% of streams overall.

  Property                 Unique Video           Video Streamer
                             Streamers (000)        Penetration (%)
    Total Internet             131,915                 100.0%
    Google Sites                64,945                  49.2%
    Fox Interactive Media       52,737                  40.0%
    Yahoo! Sites                35,024                  26.6%
    Time Warner Network         29,479                  22.3%
    Microsoft Sites             24,394                  18.5%
    Viacom Digital              19,356                  14.7%
    Verizon Communications      15,030                  11.4%
    Corporation
    ABC.COM                     10,799                   8.2%
    Disney Online               10,114                   7.7%
    MLB.COM                      7,311                   5.5%

In terms of unique visitors, Fox Interactive led by MySpace video was an impressive second to Google with more than 50 million unique streamers. Yahoo! was third with 35 million.

The average user viewed 63 streams in the month of May at an average length of 2.5 minutes. Content may still be king, but people sure love quantity. “Video snacking” as it’s come to be known has become a major part of many Americans’ days.

Also worth noting, the vast majority of this content is actually progressive download rather than live streaming. The fact that MLB.com offers primarily live streaming makes their advancement into the top ten properties by unique even more impressive.

Several months after I finished working for MLB.com, I found myself debating the regulations imposed by sports leagues. The argument essentially broke down to this question:

Is it more valuable for a league to keep all video content in-house, where it can be tightly controlled, or is there more to be gained by allowing fans access to content to create video mash-ups of their favorite players and moments, thereby increasing user engagement with the brand?

Continue Reading at Tilzy.tv

I love a contextual ad blunder as much as the next guy, but advertisers don’t. These guys should be on the phone finding out more about ScanScout for their next campaign, just as soon as they get done bitching at Yahoo.

I recently bought some Yahoo stock (YHOO) and am a firm believer that they’ll be turning themselves, and their image, around. I just happen to catch a lot of these on Yahoo because that’s where I’ve already decided to consume my content. But these things simply shouldn’t happen any more. Seriously. This one is just plain wrong.

Worth watching this relatively slow Monday morning, - Mark Cuban posted an old promo video from broadcast.com on the 8 year anniversary of their IPO. A reminder of how far we have come since then.

Yahoo! subsequently paid way too much for broadcast.com and proceeded to watch most of their clients leave for companies which, unlike Yahoo!, actually kept up with the technological advancement of streaming technology.

And remember how much strain the internet used to put on that old 386 running over a 56k modem? Here’s what happens when you do everything that can now be done online at once.
Breaking News: All Online Data Lost After Internet Crash