Wild west video
The mind-numbing proliferation of digital video has marketers in a frenzy to recover lost TV eyeballs and keep track of digital consumption through advances in measurement. Let’s ponder the landscape; by 2013, 188 million people in the U.S. will view online video at least once a month with over 80% of all users engaging and 13% of all online ad revenues being placed around it. In 2009, 65% of consumers across all age groups said they want to be able to access the Internet on their TV and an estimated 20 million web-enabled TV’s will ship in 2011. Additionally, US mobile video consumption will grow 252% between now and 2015.
With that said, how are marketers able to keep up with the accountability that digital consumption offers? Nielsen is answering this question in a couple of ways, yet are these solutions really an answer? NNR just rolled out Video Census, a tracking tool that will tell us how much time is spent with typical TV programming online in addition to other key metrics such as completion rates and market share of programming. Additionally, they are rolling out “Extended Screen” Measurement in Nielsen’s National People Meter Panel. Television programs presented online with the same commercial content as on TV can have online viewing integrated into the TV Ratings Currency.
The main barrier I see with these tools is that typically, and more often as technology advances, online buyers purchase an audience, rather than specific TV shows or even publishers. We can reach the right demo no matter what they are viewing or doing. To buy specific content requires the highest CPM’s on the Web so the argument will fall flat with clients used to prime or cable CPM’s. So, instead of making online like TV, we need to educate our clients steeped in TV about the guaranteed demographic impressions and deep analytics you can derive from digital rather than telling them their TRP’s just jumped from incremental digital exposure.
This, of course, is the situation today. But, the possibilities are endless on how this will all evolve and whether or not TV can dictate a new way of buying online and drive down specific programming rates.
