Turner announced to partners earlier this month that the company would shut down its PlayON! Sports division due to financial underperformance.

Turner has been shopping the unit around and is expected to disband it entirely by the end of June if no buyers are found.

PlayOn, a division of Turner Sports New Media, managed video streaming for USL soccer, the ACC and Atlantic Sun conferences. It also held distribution deals with Big Ten network and a number of smaller sports organizations. These institutions are now seeking new partners to carry them through the remainder of their PlayOn contract and beyond.

No word yet on layoffs or how this will affect the larger Turner New Media organization and its existing operations for PGA.com, NASCAR.com and the NBA.

A Turner spokesperson offered the following statement:

New subscription-based services that serve highly specialized content to niche audiences face growth and distribution challenges in today’s competitive sports media landscape.  That is the marketplace reality facing PlayOn.

We have made a decision to continue to focus on our core brands and businesses. As such, we will begin to streamline business operations for PlayOn. 

If you’re like me, and unable to be in Boston to celebrate the Celtics 17th NBA championship, NECN is streaming the parade live today on Mogulus (shameless plug). Check it out:

There are lots of cool companies, technologies and ad formats out there. But without metrics, “cool” ain’t worth much. So who is helping people figure out just how cool their ads are? Visible Measures is one of those companies. I’ve had the pleasure of chatting about the industry, and not the industry, with Matt Cutler, Visible Measures’ vice president of marketing & analytics, at the past few trade shows. Beet.TV grabbed a few minutes of Matt’s time at OMMA Video earlier this week, and let the MIT grad explain what’s behind all this engagement and metrics stuff. Watch……

The IAB has released its definitions for InStream ad metrics. View them on their site or download the PDF.

This is a critical step towards simplifying the buying and selling of online video advertising and speeding up the shift of TV ad dollars onto the Web. Definitions cover linear, non-linear and companion banner metrics.

Questions? Do they make sense? Will they work? Comment!

Moderator: Michael Learmonth, Silicon Alley Insider
Jane Hu, Vuguru (Michael Eisner)
Karin Klein, Softbank Capital
Warren Lee, Canaan Partners
Neil Sequeira, General Catalyst Partners

Michael: Are we in a bubble and how will it burst?
Jane: if we are in a bubble, there’s more bubbling to be had. There isn’t a lot of monetization in the space right now.

Karin: There isn’t a lot of money being made, so things will be sorted out over the next few years. I wouldn’t call it a bubble, per se. There needs to be a monetization strategy to keep the money flowing.

Warren: There is a bubble, but it will deflate, not burst. The video content companies like YouTube have been heavily funded. They will be challenges to them building a profitable business. On the infrastructure side, there is a lot of room for improvement in delivery of video and handling the load of content that is coming.

Neil: Not a bubble. But we need more companies that make this a “real business.” We need companies like Omniture. It all comes back to making money in the end of the day. As long as we continue to invest in companies that make money and help people make money, we’ll continue to invest.

Neil: In the first inning of a 9 inning ballgame, there was a clear winner. Google. They bought a premier site and will figure out how to monetize it over time. I agree with Warren that infrastructure is an opportunity, but people that deliver high quality content to audiences will be the winners.

Warren: The baseball game analogy is very appropriate. It is important to recognize that we are in the early stages. One of the interesting trends is how companies are starting to verticalize. They question is if that is a good venture business. There are companies that have potential to be a good business. We need to find companies that will be great businesses.

Michael: Are there great companies out there now? Would you put more money into Joost?

Warren: Raising a lot of money like Joost did allowed them to experiment, but it also enables them to not be very disciplined in how they spend it. There are lot of companies that have raised a lot of money and have gone away. There is a great deal of experimenting going on.

Karin: I’m not going to pick on anyone in particular, but we are very excited about companies in the content arena. Companies that do a lot of heavy lifting – like transcoding – are the ones who can be the winners because they’ll offer full service solutions to major media companies.

Warren: Given that there are so many new video companies that have been funded, and you need to understand what stage of development they are at to gauge their success. Companies that have a critical mass will have an advantage over newer companies because they will be more attractive to partners and clients.

Jane: We tend to produce a lot of content all at once, and sell advertising against it. Anyone can distribute content anywhere. The real key is figuring out how to reach the consumer. There has yet to be a real, true hit online. There is no Superman or Grey’s Anatomy. It is partially because we are in the early stages and partially that people don’t know there is original content online.

Michael: PromQueen was sold to TV. Is that a good exit strategy?
Jane: I wouldn’t say the goal is to upstream it to TV. It really depends on the content.

Michael: Are you funding any content companies?
Neil: Yes. We’re invested in Decca. They partner with great brands and then produce content. They have a bunch of niche vertical content that will continue to grow and find an audience. There are 20-30 different properties that do pretty well, with a few break out hits. But the business as a whole is very good.

Warren: We’ve looked at a lot of content, but our personal bias is that we like to invest in companies that have technology. Its been difficult for us to get over the hump and look at pure content plays. We have invested in technology that quantifies the value of content, but not the content itself.

Karin: We’ve looked at a number of studios in the video and gaming arena, but have passed.

Jane: We are invested in Veoh, which isn’t a pure content play.

Michael: The web shows aren’t really businesses yet, right?
Jane: Everything we do we try to monetize the best we can. It may be a while before we see a lot of return, but certainly a lot of our projects are profitable.

Michael: If there is a consolidation, who is going to go away?

Neil: There will be consolidation. If you look at the players and infrastructure and platform business, there is Brightcove and Maven and The Platform. Beyond that, there are a slew of companies that are venture backed. Those three have pulled away from the rest of the pack so far that there will have to be consolidation.

Karin: Some of the video advertising companies will probably consolidate as well. We’re also invested in Huffington Post.

Neil: Content and destination companies take a tremendous amount of capital in order to be successful. So it is difficult for venture firms to invest in pure video plays. There are companies that do audience aggregation and content creation.

Warren: We need to be careful not to just take a snapshot of the industry right now. You can assume it will be cheaper to deliver video online in three years. You can assume the monetization aspect will work itself out and agencies will have an easier, clearer role. The challenge is to figure out how to thrive and prosper over the next few years while the industry shakes out.

Michael: Was it smart to invest $100 mil in Hulu?
Neil: I only watch 30 Rock on Hulu. I can’t content on $100 million, but they are definitely a unique property in a unique moment in time. I commend them for creating a hell of a product. It is our belief that people who create great products do well over time.

Karin: There is a clear winner in UGC. Now there is a clear contender in the professionally produced content space as well.

Michael: Who will be the #2 player in UGC?
Neil: Its probably someone you haven’t heard of. It is so early. Everyone is struggling to figure out the business, but it is a reality that people are consuming massive amounts of video online. That is the dynamic nature of the web.

Warren: Video is a hot, sexy space. There is no shortage of people who are interested or capable of creating a video business.

Jane: Maybe there wont be a difference between UGC and professional content. In the end, what is good content is what will succeed. And we want people to be able to watch content wherever they want to.

Michael: Is everywhere fair game for distributing content?
Jane: We are very aware of content standards. Our shows are all PG-13, so we wont be on a porn site. Beyond that, the sky is the limit.

Neil: Todou is an investment we have in china. It means “Couch Potato” in Chinese. People sit in Internet cafes and watch entire shows. It has grown 100% a month for the last two years. It is a very compelling business. Monetization is still very early. But different countries have different levels of what they will tolerate as far as advertising goes. Businesses are built by great people with unique perspective, even if that means more advertising on certain content.

Warren: The video space is very interesting. You need to work with capitalists that understand the specifics of the sector. It is both a technology and media play. That isn’t often the case for VCs.

Jane: Foreign Body is a prequel to a book by Robin Cook. 50 episodes that will stand alone ahead of the release of the book. We launched it a couple of weeks ago, and the advertiser is Honda and they are very happy so far with how it has been distributed. We’re still waiting to see how it will ultimately turn out. The measures of success will be if the content is something that people like, monetization, and tune in. You can have great shows that people can’t find or a show that a lot of people watch, but there isn’t enough monetization.

Moderator: Dan Ackerman, Sr. Editor, CNET
Andrew Budkofsky, Break Media
Lynn Bolger, comScore
James Kiernan, MediaVest
Maniak Mazumdar, Nielsen
Even Silverman, Lifetime Networks

There is a lot of discussion about ISP data and how it can be applied to the web. comScore and Nielsen may not be as accurate down the long tail.

Long tail is important, but there are challenges to that. If you are on the internet for a long time, Nielson would like to be able to track you.

What are companies doing to bring stability to a tumultuous situation?
It is more about looking at 3rd party ad serving metrics, rich media partners, and fusing all the data together so that it is actionable, and we can apply the learning to our next campaigns. Lots of success using dashboards to pull together data from disparate stories.

Is there a danger of having data that can’t be validated or even recreated by other parties?
Yes, there is some, but it isn’t like people are pulling from obscure data sources. Agencies do need to be more transparent about the data they are aggregating and using.

Time spent is an idea metric in the gaming sections. In other sections, it might be page views.

How do you choose what to cherry pick for data? Do you strive for accuracy and consistency first?
It is most important to be accurate, no matter what the methodology. You need to find out what is important to the client and the clients goals. We need to be honest about the ad experience.

Advertisers are all looking for different things, so it is difficult to have a uniform methodology.

Maniak, Nielsen: We’re hoping that people don’t have to cherry pick. We can provide enough data and consensus around that data.

Dan: Lets focus on time spent.
James Kiernan: time spent is a nice proxy for engagement. But until we can measure time spent’s impact on offline sales, it is sort of meaningless.

Lynn, comScore: Which metrics are you going to use to build a business model? Transactions are based on site side data. Demographic data comes from panels. How do those pieces fit together to create a marketplace? How does a non-linear video experience compare? And most importantly, which piece do you want to negotiate on?

Dan: Who is being undercounted under different methodologies?
Maniak: We see both sides. When it comes to volume metrics, server side is more accurate. But there is a big “but.” There are lots of bots and spiders out there, so you need to clean the data. If you are using server side blindly, you are basically targeting machines. Panels are great place for audience metrics.

Dan: What about demographic groups being under represented?
Maniak: Young people are under reported. But if you believe in statistical sampling, there are ways to measure and account for that. People say that you can’t measure one audience or another. There ways to adjust for the “at work” audience, for example.

Lynn: There are challenges with kids, not just online. The at-work audience is also difficult. The practical reality is that there are firewalls.

Evan: What about shared computers?
Lynn: We identify the individual user on the machine at the time.
Maniak: There are log ins for each person. We can leverage that to distinguish individuals from each other.
Lynn: people give up a lot of personal information that we can use.

Dan: What about other companies, like Compete.com, that put out data that you can quote, even if you don’t know where it comes from.
Lynn: Use it at your own risk.

Dan: What is the ideal set of numbers?
Andrew: it would have to be a direct measurement of some kind. There are just too many discrepencies right now. It would be mostly server based, but can also be cookie based. But we need to use what the agencies are using.
Lynn: It will still be panel based.
James: Hybrid models are very intriguing. They bring the best of both worlds. I’m waiting for someone to bring it to market, but it will be more on the server side.

Maniak: We measure people, no matter what the devise or platform. There are always gaps in measurement with new technologies.

Evan: As someone who works for a cable company, merging measurement for online and offline is the most intriguing to me.

Lynn: the question of accuracy is critical. Measurement of the transaction is critical. When it comes to looking at what will happen in the future, we need data that is predictive. The role of panel data brings an awful lot into the planning process and will be required today and moving forward.

Q&A: With distribution models changing so much, how are you tackling those issues?
Maniak: If it is TV content, there is a watermark. The distribution issue isn’t a problem, at least not for TV content.
Lynn: there are business questions that need to be considered. How the inventory is packaged and sold. There is a mapping system that tracks content and where it is played, so we can bring it all back together.

Q: With people surfing the web on multiple devices, are impressions all of equal value?
A: Yes. Doesn’t matter if you watch it on an iPhone or the web.
James K: The TV networks have it backwards. They have a model where they can’t really prove the value of an impression.

Q: Is there more value to watching something on TV or downloading it on your xbox 360 on your TV, is it the same experience?
James K: We’re setting up our agencies so that it doesn’t matter where you watch your content. There won’t be broadcast vs. broadband buyers.
Lynn: there isn’t going to be a universal solution. Some marketers will want it all in one place. Others will want it segmented. But the outcome is what is important. On mobile, you can determine if someone walks into a store with GPS. The outcome metrics need to be different than if you watch on TV.

Q: Since there are discrepancies, does comScore work with publishers to make sure that the panel based data is closer to the server side data?
Lynn: We will always work with anyone on the technology to make sure the data is accurate as possible.

Q: How do you track embeds of embeds and downloadables?
James: I’m very intrigued by using watermarks to track content.

Moderator: Steve Smith
Philip Braden, ScanScout
Eric Hadley, CEO, Heavy
Rebecca Paoletti, Yahoo
Chris Allen, Starcom

Panel starts with some show-and-tell.

ScanScout Philip Braden shows overlays. Plays in-stream while the video is playing. From that point on, the ad experience is completely user initiated. New example that Philip showed was a video-in-video overlay. Cool demo alert: There was video playing in the overlay. Lots of potential here.

Eric Hadley, CMO, Heavy.com, shows an example from the Husky Media Network. It is a full page takeover that wraps around the video player. They also have a video guide that can load other syndicated content, and then serve an ad against the syndicated content, which has been pre-vetted for ad friendliness. Essentially, their ad covers up all of the content on a website except the video player. It removes the risk of having your ad seen along side questionable content.

Rebecca starts by asking the room how many people would buy those Heavy skins. Not one hand. Then into the Yahoo pitch. Four different formats, but 90% of their revenue comes from only two of those formats. User is prompted to roll over for more info. When the user does, an overlay appears that can be interacted with. Rebecca says they are seeing 6% CTR on them. A whole 6%. Not a “point-six percent.” She also shows a persistent bug that sits on top of the player that will launch an overlay. Clicking on the subsequent overlay can launch a microsite that sits on top of the player. For each clip, the advertiser gets three opportunities to engage.

Steve: What types of content are these formats good for monetizing? How do they map and match against different types of content?

ScanScout: overlays work across all types of content. They also work great for short form content where you can’t show a pre-roll. You can also contextually target the ads. We have a fair number of publishers that have UGC, and we can filter out undesirable content. The technology is flexible, which allows a brand like Disney to have different standards than Budweiser.

Eric, Heavy: We find that the skins are excellent for monetizing longer form content. We can show multiple ads without asking the user to interrupt their experience. The video guide allows the advertiser to know what content their ads will be next to.

Rebecca: We can serve pre-roll against a lot of our professionally produced content, like sports highlights. Some publishers don’t like overlays because their content is their ‘bread and butter’ and they don’t want it covered.

Philip: We can also put the overlay under the player for publishers who don’t want to cover any of their content.

Steve: Are we effectively monetizing short news clips?
Rebecca: Specific content may not be monetized on purpose. Breaking news, for example. We want users to be able to get a hurricane update immediately, without watching an ad.

Steve: Are these formats making video safer for brands?
Chris: We have two buckets. UGC and not UGC. Most of our advertisers believe they can reach their audience without dipping into the UGC pool. But we still see tons of pre-roll, mainly because its easy. They’ve already created it. We advocate for shorter ads. But you can’t get substantial reach without looking to the portals. We also look at the ad-to-content ratio for a publisher. 4:1 content to ad ratio is probably OK. We’re helping our advertisers understand what they can do with video. Most of them don’t know that you can do lead gen with video.

Steve: What about portability? Is there pushback from publishers or brands that don’t want their ads to follow the content as it is hypersyndicated?
Philip: We integrate our technology so that the ads can travel with the video. But we also want to know where the content has gone before we serve an ad.

Rebecca: Portability was a huge push for our latest ad formats. We wanted to make it easy for our publishers to use. We focused on keeping the interactions within the video player.

Chris: We want see where the content goes before we buy ads. Syndicating content out to social networks is still scary for a lot of advertisers. When we first started talking about syndication of content across the web, we knew it would be huge. Previously we had always applied the value to the content. But we’re finding that there is also a lot of value on the publisher that delivers the content. The CBS Audience Network still gets the majority of their views from CBS.com.

Steve: How well do the formats encourage video use?
Eric: We wanted to be able to monetize the video anywhere, and not force people to watch a pre-roll. When you serve an ad in the middle of a video, you’ve already got the user hooked. You need to get them hooked first. If they back out of the video because of a pre-roll, you lose all the potential ad impressions that would have come after it.

Philip: Its hard to say that any form of advertising encourages viewing. But ads need to be configured in a way so that it doesn’t alienate users.

Rebecca: This is an ongoing debate. I always have people saying “kill the pre-roll.” And we’ll test it, but it never affects the levels of video consumption. Our focus is on the number of videos to ads. On the entertainment side, there is no difference in video consumption regardless of the ad format.

Steve: Video ads are becoming more interactive. It is still interruptive, even if it is up to them. Are people really willing to interact with an ad?

Philip: Engagement in general is good. We are 1%+ CTR on the overlays. But more than half of the people that click on the overlay eventually click through to the destination site.

Erik: We put the interactivity in the skin because it is such a large piece of real estate. Our audience multitasks. They want to watch a bunch of goofy videos, not really paying attention.

Steve: Are we getting to the point where there is confusion in the market about what constitutes a video ad?

Erik: You need to try lots of things.

Chris: People expect new things. They want to be entertained and have fresh new things in front of them while they are surfing the web. Part of our job is to be respectful of the user experience.

Steve: What are you charging media buyers for these ad formats?
Philip: Overlays start at $10 CPM.
Erik: We’re looking at $25 CPMs
Rebecca: We’re in the middle of negotiating our upfronts, but generally CPMs start at $25 for ROS because we are able to do a lot of targeting.

Chris: When I compare video CPMs to TV, there is a huge premium online. And we’re willing to pay that premium if we know that it is being effective. I think the “teens” is a good rate for pre-roll.

Moderator: Will Richmond, VideoNuze
Rob Barnett, CEO, MyDamnChannel
Jeremy Lockhorn, Director of Emerging Media, Avenue A/Razorfish
Peter Hoskins, CEO, ManiaTV
Joe Frydl, Ogilvy Entertainment
John McCarus, VP, Digitas Branded Content

Will: What is branded entertainment? What does that mean? What are your clients goals as it pertains to it?

John: Clients that have a digital strategy are starting to realize they need a digital content strategy as well. It is brand content. What is the relationship that the brand needs to have with the content.

Peter: At the end of the day, branded content is entertaining and advances the brands marketing objectives, whatever the objectives may be. We look at a series of metrics, like moving brand perception according to a tracking study, for example.

Jeremy: I think more about branded experiences. It is doing away with the one-way of old media, and embracing the two way conversation of new media. It also allows the consumer to get engaged.

Peter: We talk about a continuum where you can start with a “brought to you by” around cool content. The other end is like Transformers, where there is a love story between a boy and a car, which launched the new Chevy Camaro. Everything in that continuum communicates that brand message. Adding a bit of art to that process really improves that process.

Rob: Being here, at this point, is a perfect marriage. Companies like MDC are rewriting the rules. You’ll find that we’re a lot easier to work with than traditional media. We find that agencies and brands in particular are much more interested in working more with the content. There are audiences that are very electric. “You Suck At Photoshop” is a great example. We’ve got opportunities that are a lot more personal, a lot more integrated than bigger media. There are also fewer levels, so we can move a lot faster than traditional media.

John: The fundamental difference is that there is no network on the Web. If you are a brand that is used to have things packaged up and wrapped in a bow, that isn’t going to happen on the web. We operate further upstream.

Unless you can guarantee an audience, you’ve got a non-starter. We know that in the end of the day we need to deliver an audience. We are all in the audience product marketplace.

Jeremy: There is something to the comparison of the size and the quality of the audience. If you can put my brand in front of the right 10 people, then we want to talk to you.

Will: What has worked?

Joe: Helmans. We did a broadband program on yahoo, “in search of real food.” It was successful as content because we started with “what is the brand about?” Helmans wanted to be about “real food.” When you start with the DNA of the brand, a number of opportunities present themselves. Getting Yahoo to treat this as content is also key. The more they can treat it as editorial, the easier it is for them to drive traffic and reach.

Will: Could they have succeeded without a partnership?
Joe: Probably not. You need a minimal level of distribution to get the idea seeded.

Will: Do you work with Yahoo along the way? Or do you bring it to them afterwards?
Joe: It is a fuzzy process, but they are all open to ideas like this. It was important for us that they treat us as content. Too often, people look at brands just as big checkbooks.

Peter: The brands we have the most success with are the ones that we sit on the same side of the table with. We aren’t in a hits business. We try to form a relationship with the audience through episodic content, but is independent of that advertiser. Then we can bring the right brands to the right content, and reach the right demographics. Every one of our shows follows that formula. Our video game show is consistently successful.

Jeremy: We did a program for BestBuy, who wanted to increase awareness of their appliance department. We partnered with Sarah Moulton where we did a makeover of her apartment. She had a horrific kitchen for a celebrity chef. So we did a complete remodel of her kitchen in 8 episodes. That is a great example of marrying the right concept with the right audience.

Will: Success around what metric?
Jeremy: Viewership, engagement, that sort of thing. But ultimately we wanted to drive sales. It pretty much blew our expectations out of the water.

Joe: Marketers are used to launching things in synchronization across platforms. Now we are looking at building audiences slowly, leading up to a big launch. We’ve got lower costs of production, lower costs of distribution that allow us to look at success differently than we look at it on television. What is a hit on the web?

Rob: If we were to build a YouTube today, it would costs $80-$90k. The question is how many videos do you want to host and have people watch. If you are going to create content, don’t create too much of it. If someone is going to consume 3-4 pieces of content, you want to be able to deliver your content to them consistently. It is more like an HBO model than a broadcast model. We have 8 channels. We don’t want to say that every single video in the world is here. We brought in Don Was (music producer) for a program for Lincoln that focused on bands from Detroit. It was twice as successful as any of their other campaigns.

Will: Where does the push for branded entertainment leave the agency world and their role?
Jeremy: The new world is about earning attention, not buying attention. It makes us work a lot harder, rather than just buying the eyeballs.

Joe: You also need to embrace the ambiguity. And recognize that everyone is trying to eat your lunch. The roles are going to be very fluid.

John: This is a whole new space. We sit with our clients at “the gate to the distribution swamp.” We discuss a distribution and engagement strategies. One of the challenges is to think about costs and process and the role of traditional creative.

Jeremy: There is a blurring of the line of what is media and what is content. One of the things we’ve learned about in social media is that distribution trumps destination. The philosophy behind social media is about bringing pieces of functionality that are relevant to an audience where they are, instead of driving them back to their site.

Moderator: Jamison Tilsner, Tilzy.TV
TS Kelly, Mediacontacts
Randy Kilgore, Tremor Media
Kevin McGurn, Hulu
Peter Naylor, NBC Universal
Tim Shey, New Next Networks

Do Independent Video Producers Stand a Chance Against the Big Boys?

Tim: NNN is the home of Obama girl, and now McCain girl, which became the #1 video on YouTube within the first 12 hours of its launch. NNN has embraced the idea of super distribution. We’ve embraced as many formats and outlets as possible, while still controlling the advertising and monetization of the content.

Tilz: Could the talent behind IndyMogul (NNN channel) have had the same success on their own?
Tim: There is a certain point in business where things start to get really interesting. We’d been working a bit with lots of the early web video producers. When a video property starts to gain serious traction, they need to ask, “Ok, now what?” So when a lot of people like this all want to do the same thing, there is economy of scale. What we thought about was how not to make the original audiences, that made these shows popular, suffer through the monetization process.

Tilz: How important is the marketing effort in order to gain traction?
Tim: When we first launched, we didn’t care if we got 15k views per month. We wanted organic growth. There is always a way to drive traffic. You can go to Yahoo and turn on the traffic, but then you don’t know if you really have something good. Once we establish that the content is good, we can go out and do deals around them.

Kevin: Hulu starts mostly with professionally produced content that already has an audience. But for other content, we use what our editors think is cool, and also what is popular on the site. They aren’t always the same. We want to make video as viral as possible. If you think your friends would like a video, we want you to be able to share it. Things on the web don’t have to be an instant success. In fact, they generally aren’t, unless they were popular somewhere else first.

Tilz: I noticed that Hulu has adopted some of the made for web content. DadLabs, Abigale’s Teenage Diary, for example.

Kevin: All of our content is professionally produced, and high quality. Hulu is a high resolution, high quality player, which is a barrier to entry for a lot of user generated content. Hulu is going to be the biggest aggregator of professionally produced content. Video can be shot on a small budget, but still have quality.

Tilz: How do you see a fragmented market as an ad agency?

TS: Size matters. Sometimes it’s the motion of the ocean. It’s the motion for the smaller producers. We look at a lot of data to figure out what is working. We educate, test, and prove performance. We have to mesh all of this data together to figure it all out, but in the end, its about getting people into stores and buying product. Our job is to be able to interpret data for our clients. In the past it was a lot easier. There is a tremendous need for analytics.

Randy: If TV is the goliath, we are all Davids right now.

TS: I don’t need to worry about aggregating content, and don’t look at video in isolation. I just need to prove it worked. I look at the relationship of video and search, video and display.

Randy: The other goliath is the unknown. We want to shed light on it, but it is hard right now. The time, effort and innovation is what will allow us to ‘slay the monster.’

Peter: It is very difficult to compare the web and TV. Its not squares and squares. Its squares and circles. You’ve got evergreen content on the web. You can take all these clips and aggregate them into niche networks. But the content was used one way in one medium, and is used differently on the web.

Tilz: NBC and Hulu are selling ads across their entire library?
Peter & Kevin: Yes.

Tilz: What stops you from using all the data that TS describes?

Kevin: We are using it. We are doing a crawl, walk, run approach. But we have demographic data, and profiling data, and targeting data, and can share that with buyers to help them plan. The agencies are tasked with marrying that to the adserver data that they have. But you have a heightened level of information that you can’t get anywhere else. With Dynamic Logic and Insight Express, you can add even more data to help plan your next campaign.

Peter: Networks have only really been streaming shows for 24 months. Our advertisers get the first look at the data we gather on how people are consuming the content.

TS: There is a level of expectation for accountability for how things work online. We are presenting results to our clients in multiple forms. We use ecommerce data. We use whatever we have to show that a campaign works. Advertisers are now coming to us to help them produce content. Its like the 50s all over again.

Tilz: Jeff Zucker said he wants to avoid going to niche. That seems at odds with some of the current content producers.
Peter: He was talking specifically about broadcast. When he is talking about broadcast, he’s talking about creating “tentpole” events that people gather around. When it comes to niche content, look at some of our investments. We’ve invested in DriverTV, which is for automotive shoppers. We have an investment for pet owners. So overall, we are placing bets everywhere – broad and niche.

Tilz: What should be the definitive success metric?
TS: Sales. There are so many moving parts.

Randy: You really need to be consultative. You need to do a lot of the blocking and tackling. But each client has their own set of success metrics, and that is what is critical to us. But that is also what makes it difficult to do one-offs.

Kevin: There isn’t a standard across the board. Your ad opportunities vary based on the content. People need to back off of engagement. What you choose to do with an ad impression is up to the client. Understand your audience, see which ones are performing the best, and optimize. We’ve got both brand and direct response metrics to measure and work with.

Tim: As a programming company, we are relying on a lot of the people on the stage to figure that out. We can’t focus on developing the next behavioral targeting technology. But we need to get on board with some metric as an industry just so we can all have a conversation around a common metric. In the meantime, we sell a lot of sponsorships and integrate our sponsors very organically.

Q&A:
Lloyd Truffelman, Trylon: What can we learn about the “inversion” that we were talking about earlier. People sit down to “see what is on TV.” How are we going to find content?
Kevin: It is about the individual, and a network of trusted friend, trusted sources. And then you look at what those networks are doing. Personalized platforms. But we need “one number” across all platforms that allows us to measure all of this. We’re going to need to find a common language.

Tim: We are still betting on brands. Even as blogging was taking apart the publishing industry, there were plenty of outlets popping up to become your brand that you trust to help you find the content you love. Brands haven’t gone away, they are just evolving in the way they communicate with people.

Randy: It is exciting now that there are so many people creating content for the digital space. But it is not going to stay that way for ever. The big guns, people that can make things happen, are getting involved. CAA was at the Digital NewFront presentation. There will always be some opportunity to be innovative and get yourself known, but that opportunity will shrink.

Tim: There is great stuff out there. We need to bring the content from the end of the tail and push it up to the head. That’s what Hulu is doing with recommending content.

Moderator: Joe Mandese
Andy Von kennel, SVP, Measure2x
Adam Kasper, SVP, Mediacontacts
Jeff Malmad, Director of Digital Media, Beyond Interaction
Damon Bethal, Digital Director, Mediavest

(Podium was in the way, and I couldn’t see who was speaking all the time. Sorry.)

Adam: There is a shift up for clients wanting to “do online video.” But for the majority of clients, and ones that have been steeped in television, there is an increased interest in online video.

Jeff: There is a fundamental shift in the way that agencies look at the space. It’s a “run and gun offense.” You can be as creative as you want and pitch those ideas. Long form content, short form episodic content, how to content, niche programs all make sense for the scope of advertisers that we have. The distribution mechanism is driving how we look at it.

Andy – There is a broad spectrum of points o view right now. We’ve already gone through the growth in interest. Now we are looking at managing and tracking against the fact that video can go anywhere.

Joe: What are the implications for your clients when they consume video on ABC.com vs on MySpace?

Adam: The decentralization is an issue. You want to make sure that you are on the strong media brands. Based on the objectives, like awareness, reach is a critical component, and you need to look at some of the redistribution aspects, like networks, social networks, video portals. The client just needs to know and understand where their messaging is going to appear.

Andy: There is safety in numbers. Clients feel comfortable with scale. But looking at monthly uniques for a site takes away from the real focus of using video. The sight, sound and motion is available in highly contextual and cool ways.

Adam: That is true to a point, but you get into tough conversations when you start losing control over the distribution. Clients want to block sites, or they are familiar with a site because their kid watches it, and that isn’t the target audience. We need to ensure that our message is in front of the right audience and the right content.

Joe: The network-ization of the video space is amazing. How does that play into the mix?

It can vary by client. You can allocate a certain amount of television budget to test it. Clients are becoming more open minded about it, because that’s where people are going. Pre-roll is great, and a great way to get a client to start using online video, and it creates a segue to advance the conversation beyond pre-roll and into the social syndication. There are a lot of things in the works that are unique and could fundamentally change the way people buy and sell.

Curious clients need to move beyond the test. We need to stop using innovation and test budgets because video advertising is here to stay. We need to develop the video assets to use in the environment, develop their own meaningful content for consumers whether it is participatory or not. However, that gets away from things like standardization. How do you maintain standardization and advance the medium for the benefit of the consumer and the brand.

Joe: We don’t really know what we can do with this medium yet. But what don’t we know about where it is going? How can brands begin to connect with consumers in way that we don’t know about yet?

Can you sponsor an application like Hulu that allows you to cut your own clips from a movie and upload it to Facebook? You need to sit with your clients and explain to them how it works. You have to physically see it. It’s a complex area that people are intimidated by.

Adam: We’ll also see an explosion in the types of streams that we see. Professionally produced and mid tier content is created, then goes to TV, then goes online. We’ve seen a few examples of content that is created for the Web and makes it way to TV. But the production chain is flexible. It can be created, go straight to DVD, then makes it way to the web. Straight to DVD movies could live on the Web for a month before it goes to DVD. There will be a huge change in the path of distribution. We’re still in the infancy of figuring this thing. In the next 6-12 months, we’ll see people trying nearly everything to figure out the magic formula.

Joe: What about the creative? We can control the media, but what about the message? What do we need to do to integrate our messaging?

Part of it is how you distribute it. The interactivity is determined by the brand objectives. It will be very brand specific. The agency will work with the brand to determine the best path for them. Right from the briefing process, there’s a discussion about the creative assets, what the client wants to accomplish. Its very hard to say “here’s what we’re going to see more of.”

Joe: How do we get really good video assets for a wide variety of advertisers?

Andy – When you work with an entertainment client, you have amazing assets. But if you have a low interest CPG client, you need to look for partnerships with companies that have assets that you can leverage. Clients all have to make it themselves. It doesn’t have to be just a :30 any more. Right from the start, the assets need to be built with the campaign objectives in mind.

Adam: The creative agencies are leaning on the media agencies more than ever to explain the medium. Many creative agencies still make their money on 30 second ads. But they know they need to get better in the digital space. There are as many opportunities to create content on your own. But the beginning of the conversation happens in a much different environment than it did before when it comes to developing brand strategies. It is all being shaken up, and we’re watching the fallout right now.

Joe: What do we need to make this medium accountable?

Andy – We’re challenged with figuring out how to do it better the next time. We look at how and what we are measuring, and try to use that for the next campaign.

Adam: We are very data and analytics based agency. We develop tools to provide us with insight that we can act on. We also need full transparency in video, and we don’t have it yet. Where it is seen, how much, where they are clicking off, what mix of ads and content is the right mix. We’re getting there, but we aren’t there yet, and there are some big hurdles to overcome.

Jeff: You need to be creative in order to be a leader. Online video works. Period. But the client starts asking “how do you know?” They are very reluctant to move into the space when it is difficult to show them visually how it works. If it is all about visually showcasing your brand, it does work, it does drive sales.

Damon: Metrics are incredibly important. Its good to see how granular we can get, but it doesn’t mean you want to get into paralysis by analysis. But metrics translates into currency. It is how we understand brand and media equity. You need to get some idea of how you are using your brand equity. You also need to look at things in a variety of ways. Is video a “people platform” or a “media vehicle?”

Q&A Audience:

Is there any strength to the monetization aspect of global reach?
- Depends on the client. If they are global, then yes. But it needs to be done in the right way. As soon as you start selling content outside the US, that is another conversation.

Q: Lots of spikes in video consumption. How do you plan for a spike?
A: When the spikes happen, we want our message in front of those spikes because that’s where people are. We work with the publishers to pace our delivery so we can leverage the spike without blowing through all of our impressions.

A2: When you see spikes, you can monetize them differently. You can find an advertiser who wants to take a risk and are willing to buy those spikes at a lower rate.

Q: How open are clients to video, with all of the metrics it provides, compared to TV, where there are none? Why is it such a difficult sell?
A: People not understanding what the space is about is the challenge. Once they understand the space, they’ll be more willing to spend the money. You have to be partners with your clients and be patient. You need to speak to them in a way that helps them understand that they’ll “do more good” for their brand online. The video space is an opportunity to do things they’ve never imagined before.