This afternoon, comScore announced the introduction of Video Metrix 2.0, the next generation of comScore’s online video measurement service. The new service offers several enhancements – including reporting of online video ad impressions – designed to better align with the today’s evolving online video landscape.
Enhancements to the service include:
- The ability to filter video viewing activity between ads and content.
- TV show-level reporting for major broadcast sites.
- Additional reporting metrics, including average daily unique viewers, viewing sessions, percentage of ads by videos viewed, percentage of ads by time spent viewing video, ads per content video, content minutes per ad minute.
- Ranking of video ad networks by actual reach of ads delivered as opposed to only the potential reach of the network.
- Recalibration of estimates of unique viewers as a result of improved data collection methods.
In addition, comScore plans to introduce an updated Gross Rating Point (GRP) metric in the coming months to further enable cross-media comparability with TV.
Comparability is nice, but GRPs have their limitations as a metric. My father was the director of marketing at Oldsmobile, back in the late 1980s when General Motors still made Oldsmobiles. He once asked his ad agency, “How many GRPs do I need to sell a car?” The agency, Leo Burnett, didn’t have an answer.
At the same time it was announcing Video Metrix 2.0, comScore also shared the latest stats on the top video content properties by unique viewers and top video ad properties by video ads viewed. And there were some interesting surprises.
For example, more than 177 million U.S. Internet users watched video content in June. Google Sites, driven primarily by video viewing at YouTube.com, ranked as the top video content property with 144.5 million unique viewers, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 44.9 million viewers and VEVO with 43.7 million viewers. VEVO was launched in April 2009 by Universal Music Group and YouTube and the new music video network has already made it to the top three.
Google Sites had the highest number of overall viewing sessions with 1.8 billion and average time spent per viewer at 261 minutes, or 4.3 hours. Hulu also had high viewer engagement with an average of 135 minutes (or 2.2 hours) per viewer. But Hulu had only 24.0 million unique viewers.
Americans viewed more than 4.3 billion video ads in June, with Hulu generating the highest number of ad views at 566 million. Tremor Media Video Network ranked second overall — and highest among video ad networks — with 524 million ad views, followed by BrightRoll Video Network (333 million) and Microsoft Sites (222 million). Video ads reached 45 percent of the total U.S. population an average of 31.5 times during the month. Hulu delivered the highest frequency of video ads to its viewers with an average of 24.2 over the course of the month.
Other notable findings from June 2010 include:
- 84.6 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video.
- The duration of the average online content video was 4.9 minutes, while the average online video ad was 0.4 minutes.
- Video ads accounted for 12.2 percent of all videos viewed but only 1.2 percent of all minutes spent viewing video online.
Get it? Got it? Good.