Video tracking startup Visible Measures signed up MySpace as a customer to measure more deeply how consumers are watching and spreading videos from the site. MySpace is the Web’s No. 2 video site, although it is still only one tenth the size of YouTube in terms of videos streamed. Visible Measures, which raised $10 million in March in a series C funding, also counts Viacom and MTV Networks as another big customer.
Like every other video site, MySpace is increasing the amount of professionally-produced premium videos because those are more appealing to advertisers. It sees the user-generated videos (UGC) more as a communication feature for MySpace members. MySpace’s video VP Jason Kirk tells me:
We have seen big increases in premium intent viewing over UGC. Premium content views probably close to doubled in the last year. USG video is part of the social network part of our site.
With Visible Measures, MySpace will be able to track consumer engagement at a more granular level. And, more importantly, it can give all of its video partners a self-serve dashboard to track their own videos. For instance, they will be able to see how many times a particular video is watched 10 percent through, 60 percent through, or all the way through. Visible Measures also tracks views as they spread across the Web and can show spikes based on what other sites pick up a particular video.
Visible Measures CEO Brian Shin was surprised the amount of premium video content available on MySpace and the engagement levels he’s seen so far. According to him, the average viewing time per session on MySpace is 10 minutes, with the average viewer watching four videos per session. He says that is “twice the norm” for comparable videos on other sites. In contrast, Comscore’s VideoMetrix, which doesn’t directly measure each video but is rather an estimate based on a panel, shows only 11.3 minutes watched per viewer per month for Fox Interactive as a whole.
What’s the purpose of this? Why does anyone care if someone watches 0:30 or 0:45 secs or whatever of a video of a bulldog skateboarding or Matt dancing on the Ross Ice Shelf?
If/when sites starting overlaying ads onto the vid streams, they’ll know if they get that impression. Right?
Seriously, whats the point? Most vid consumption is frivolous entertainment anyway. And ad serving on it is already measurable…what am i missing?
Great application for tracking where video’s go and what metrics it produces, blog comments, derivative video’s etc.. But with all advertising it comes down to best effort, There is never a full-proof mechanism for total ad engagement.
The anylitics app in development that I am currently following is http://www.medi...case/index.html
Really interesting!
Understanding the viewer engagement is a very important metric.
But at the end of the day what online businesses using video are looking for is understanding the impact of videos on the bottom line. On CONVERSION.
MySpace is not necessarily the #2 video destination on the Web. The report says that “Fox Interactive Media” is the number two video destination in the country. Certainly MySpace gets a bulk of the video plays, but that property also encompasses all Fox affiliate stations, American Idol, Fox Sports, AskMen etc. Visible Measures does not measure video for those sites.
@Tal I agree. I can’t see these guys going very far without the ability to track the rest of MySpace and how video impacts registrations, ad clicks, etc.
@correction,
There is a very interesting company that focuses on implementing videos and measuring their impact on download, buy, register etc (www.eyeviewdigital.com )
This is old news – TubeMogul’s been doing this across more distribution sites and with a better analytics package than VM. Check them out at http://www.tubemogul.com.
Wow. MySpace. What everyone has failed to mention is that there is no revenue tied to this deal. Kudos to Visible Measures for giving the service away. Must have been a tough sell.