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……

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.

Web Video Is Worth the Investment

“Shift Happens”

The web was originally a communications medium, with email being the primary use. Then the shift began towards consumption of content, followed by social media, and now video. It is a fundamental shift. We are talking about “The Video Web.”

In one year, video consumption has become mainstream. It is part of the embedded experience. Cisco predicts a huge increase in the volume of bits being delivered around the web, driven by video consumption.

Is the Web a better way of consuming video? It is 100% on demand. It is searchable. Broad selection. There are fewer reasons to watch TV. There is also true multimedia convergence going on, driven by news content. News isn’t just text any more. It is a full multimedia experience.

What does it take to rise up in the space? It is very hard to be a generalist. The video ecosystem is evolving by specialists that are addressing discreet issues. It requires focus. Broadband Enterprises is one example. NextNewNetworks is another example. NNN targets niches with a low cost, distributed model on the web. How do you leverage that distribution? Trying to get everyone to one place – ie your site – is no longer effective.

Generate (run by WB’s Jordan Levin) operates like a studio. It creates products that work in a multimedia environment. The web has become a farm system for TV, due to the lower cost structures. Mixercast is another investment that allows people to create mashups and share them, which leverages the social media and desire to share content. There is still a need for video aggregators, like Blip and Veoh, and the need for infrastructure like Brightcove.

There are lots of different categories in the ecosystem which are all being built. We are past the boom phase, where everything is hot. Then there is a bust phase, where there is a shakeout, followed by a phase of true business development. We’re somewhere in between the bust and development phase.

Video: 2.8 minutes average, so still driven by shortform content. Hulu is much better than anyone expected, but is the exception to the rule right now.

What is holding the industry back right now is a lack of standards and metrics. The web has previously been using text based metrics, like page views. Now we are looking at establishing video based metrics. Standards will allow us to scale the industry. 20 years ago, the head of research at Nielsen said something that has stuck with me. Yes, the system is flawed. However, “It is absolutely wrong, but relatively correct.” You accept the fact that the hard data may be wrong, but the directional data provides enough info to standardize and scale. This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t strive for better and better metrics, but as long as we have actionable information, we’re off to a good start.

We’ve seen some shakeout in the destination sites. Revver is gone. Many people are trying to produce content in different ways. There will have to be a shakeout. Same in the infrastructure sector. The big dollars will flow after there is a clearer shakeout. The risk that people worry about is that monetization will take longer. The hyper fragmentation is a challenge to scale. There also needs to be the economics to support it.

Consumption. Innovation. Monetization. That is the sequence that things will happen. But they wont happen without the targeting and standardization and scale. The dollars always follow the consumption. The more we can bring advertisers into environments that they can trust, the faster this will happen.

Q&A: CEO from MyDamnChannel. How do you compare sponsorships, CPMs on banner ads?
A: Sponsorships may get the dollars to flow, but ultimately isn’t scalable. Needs to be more about scalable solutions.

Q: What is the future of the :30 and :60 second spot? Are they a thing of the past?
A: On TV, no, on the web, yes. :30 - : 60 is tough. :10-:15 is interesting, especially targeted.

Q: Is there a distinction between monetizing UGC vs. professionally generated content?
A: Yes. For the near term, marketers want to be in environments that they can trust. As stewards for our clients brands, we want to make sure they are shown in the right way. There may be a higher degree of safety - and thus monetization – in UGC in the future. But right now, there isn’t.

Check out Daisy Whitney’s New Media Minute. This week she digs in to how Mojo HD is paying close attention to user comments and feedback on their web series “The Circuit” and changing the editorial direction based on it. Good stuff.

Also, don’t miss Daisy (or us) at the OMMA Video Conference on Monday!