Video Media Metrics Discussed by Execs From blip.tv, Aegis, Colgate Palmolive, Worldwide Biggies and Coca-Cola - JackMyers Daily Data

The JackMyers Future of Media Breakfast was held on Tuesday with the central focus on online content and the digital space, and its current and future direction (click to read commentaries by Jack Myers, Jerry Weinstein, Nina Spezzaferro and Ed Martin). The burgeoning online community of social networks, user-generated content and online programming dominated the discussion. What seems to inevitably come up when digital content is discussed is the issue of measurement in terms of viewing and tracking audience engagement and in turn, creating return on investment for advertisers, websites and networks. As progressive and innovative as this digital landscape is, the methods to measure it haven't quite caught up…although they are on their way.

"The infrastructure to support web video advertising is not there yet. We need standards and metrics," says Dina Kaplan, COO of blip.tv and a speaker on the breakfast panel. The Interactive Advertising Bureau next week will release initial standards for online video advertising measurement.

Albie Hecht, CEO of Worldwide Biggies and panelist, agreed. "It’s a challenge to get those metrics out there."

New methods of measurement are becoming more important than ever. Not only is research used to prove ROI, but it is a new tool for creative innovations, forecasting and targeted content. In a JackMyers Media Business Report on the research industry, Great Expectations: Research Industry Looks Toward New Era in Media Measurement, Jack Myers and Dorian Benkoil illustrate the inroads taking place within media measurement. They state that, "in addition to better measures of consumer viewing and engagement with advertising, the marketplace is increasingly demanding business-to-business solutions for tracking and maintaining accountability for video content, both program and advertising, across myriad distribution channels."

The mixed blessing is that as more digital content reaches so many audiences through new and different channels, it creates heaps of fresh and interesting data about how and when they consume.

While the entire panel of speakers from the various industries -- from the ad agency side, product side, and content production and hosting side -- would certainly benefit from a single source option for measurement, it hasn't emerged yet.

Twenty industry executives from online, research, television and the advertising sales industries interviewed for the JackMyers Report overwhelmingly agreed that "in a jumble of media and metrics, the burden today is on marketers, media and agencies to craft their own measures for success and work collaboratively through trade associates and industry groups to define the optimum tools and resources that meet a standard of both competitive value and reliability."

Companies like Teletrax are hitting the target by using proprietary digital watermarking technology to track video content across global media for their clients. Other companies such as TiVo, TRA, TNS, Latitude, Backchannelmedia, Dynamic Logic and, of course, Nielsen, are all using various methodologies to offer marketers, agencies and media companies distinctive information on viewing audiences.

"The old certainties of measurement, if they even were certainties, are under threat. Viewers are serving themselves, they’re empowered, so getting the DNA is really tricky now," says Andy Nobbs, President of Teletrax, which is a division of Medialink.

The key is taking all of this new "DNA", interpreting it correctly and extracting the right insights from it. "There’s a massive drive to have data that’s actionable and have confidence in the data," says Nobbs. "There’s always been a struggle for the industry in trying to achieve that precision."

Kaplan agrees: "We as publishers and content creators need a way to tell advertisers what they need to know so they can go to their bosses and say 'I want to do a web video buy.' Advertisers need to be able to get from us the metrics they need to justify doing bigger buys than what they have [bought] in the past."

There are definite advances, but most in the online and advertising community agree that at some point in the not-too-distant future, online video content measurement will have few limitations.