Great piece by Carl Bialik in the WSJ today about online video metrics. This is something I’ve been talking to publishers about. It’s challenging to go from a format (online banners) about which you can know so much — impressions, click throughs, etc. to something about which you know so little, given the Web’s free-wheeling distribution methods (which are, by the way, amazing and wonderful). And yet, video can undeniably be more powerful.
From the piece, a run-down of how Viral Factory came up with a number for the number of times the popular “Star Wars Kid” video was viewed:
The final estimate of 900 million came from taking the number of Google search returns today; assuming there are five times as many Web sites, cumulatively, since the video debuted in 2003; estimating that one-third of these are “blogs / articles / forum posts”; that each of those were read by, on average, 50 people; that of those people — supposedly no one read more than one of those sites — three of four watched one or more clips; that of those who watched, each watched on average 10 of the roughly 120 versions of the video; and that on average these “Star Wars” Kid fans would watch each clip once a year, or three times in all. That’s 500,000 * 5 * 1/3 * 50 * 0.75 * 10 * 3 = 945 million. “We rounded down — what’s the odd 45 million between friends?” Viral Factory wrote in the comments.
I think in the near future, you can count on Youtube editors to be able to have metrics on these videos (e.g. # of impressions ,# of times embedded, etc.)
Google’s acquisition makes this possible, and as you know, there’s some smart people over there that can churn out code in their sleep…
What do you think?