Dive Brief:
- Tubular Labs is hoping its Tubular Video Ratings metric will become the standard for measuring the impact of branded video.
- The metric is designed to measure publisher- and influencer-created branded video performance compared to average comparable videos, according the Wall Street Journal.
- Tubular Labs Co-Founder Allison Stern told the Journal, "There is all sorts of money and video rushing into online video. People clearly believe in the medium, but people from traditional media are struggling with how to evaluate it. What’s missing is a measurement standard."
Dive Insight:
As marketers pour more and more dollars into digital video, being able to track what does and doesn't work is essential to reducing waste as well as helping them improve the content they create. As the Journal put it, the goal would be for a brand to be able to measure whether working with an influencer on a YouTube video is more effective than having a publisher create branded content for them, or the opposite.
Stern told the Journal that "a lot of people are jockeying for this space" and that she sees her company's abilities as a complement to comScore and Nielsen.
Speaking from the marketer and agency point of view, Matt Britton, chief executive at the ad agency MRY, also told the Journal even though he hadn’t seen Tubular’s new metric, marketers do want clarity. He said marketers would prefer a third-party standard as opposed to being forced to rely on measurements provided by media partners for branded video, adding a standard measurement metric would help justify investing in the format.
Objective measurement is always an issue for marketers whether its ads served on social media platforms, or something more specific such as branded videos published by different partners. Anything that might provide a way to take stock of how those branded and influencer videos perform compared to other similar videos will be a welcome addition to the marketplace.