Coincidence? I think not. HBO’s web development division, HBOlab, is bringing a host of internet (semi)stars together for The Hooking Up Show.

Seemingly a LonleyGirl meets 90210, with a cast of online video personalities including Jessica Lee Rose, aka ‘lonelygirl15′ as well as Will Video For Food’s Kevin Nalts and Michael Buckley of the “What the Buck Show.”

What does this mean for original online content and its homegrown stars? This blogger isn’t so sure. HBO has said the first season will not be ad supported, so that’s sure to make it easier to aggregate the audiences that enjoy webisodic content but hate ads, but underminds the online video ad supported model that has so far dominated professionally produced web content.

What has me more concerned, however, is when you look a little deeper. HBO certainly has the chops for developing content, and has resources much deeper than most of the other independent web content producers. But is this ensemble cast really telling us that no one individual web-celeb can support a business model? This is the king of cross-pollination of content, and seems like what happens when competing high school cliques decide to have parties on the same weekend. “Well, if you bring your party to my party, then we’ll have a really good party.”

Kudos to HBOlab and everyone involved. We’ll be sure to keep a close eye out on this one.

Ben adds: I just have to point out the irony that a little more than a year ago we were discussing who would be the HBO of online video. I argued then that existing online video producers need to offer higher quality content. HBO seems to be offering an outlet for these guys to make this possible. It took them a year to come around, but maybe the HBO of online video will be HBO.

We said so. Seems like most people agree. Check the comments from Chris Albrecht’s piece this morning.

I tried to watch a few live streams and was only able to after telling the player that I had a different cable provider. The content was of fair quality, a bit stuttery, and overall, very difficult to navigate. I just wanted to watch some women’s team archery, damnit!

Andy Plesser, over at Beet.TV, seems impressed with the stats that Neilsen put out, though. To each their own, but I’m still disappointed so far. I’m with Chris. The navigation is a little clunky, and I’d really like to have set up Miro to download the events I wanted while I was at work or sleeping and watch at my leisure. When I went to the “Longform Rewind” page, and selected the RSS feed, I was greeting with a “Sorry, the requested page is unavailable” message. Bummer.

But to Andy’s point, there’s myriad videos to choose from, and probably satisfies most people’s needs. Damn us nitpicky bloggers.

What’s that got to do with online video? At least Comedy Central makes “The Death of Chef” availble to post here straight from their site.

When I clicked to “watch now” link to, well, watch now, I was greeted with this lovely message.

The Olympic online video version of “This game is blacked out in your area.”

Integrated Media Measurement, Inc. (IMMI) has issued a report showing that up to 20% of episodic content viewing occurs online, depending on the genre of the content and the amount of time the show has been on the air. In a some cases i is higher than DVR viewing of the broadcast content.

Download the full report.

Some of the more striking data shows that online viewing is flat out replacing TV, not just catching shows you missed or clips that you wanted to watch again. Another key difference showed that white, affluent, well educated, working women aged 25 to 44 were the dominant viewers of online TV content, compared to the male 18-25 demo that is typically associated with online video. To me, this signals the shift away from the UGC fad into higher quality, professionally produced content.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, NBC and NFL will stream Sunday Night Football.

“Sunday Night Football Extra,” will offer the Al Michaels/John Madden audio stream, additional camera angles, and the ability to watch multiple video streams and in-game highlights. I’m picturing something similar as MLB.com’s MLBTV Premium, which allows you to watch up to 6 games simultaneously.

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: 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: 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.