TubeMogul, the premier distribution and analytics company for online video, announced results of research today clarifying what counts as a “view” across video sharing sites (i.e. YouTube).
TubeMogul tested various actions on 14 different video sites, including hitting refresh on a video after it starts playing, watching more than half of a video, watching a video to completion and playing embedded videos, as well as varying IP addresses and cache settings when necessary.
TubeMogul found that once a video starts playing, all but two video sites tested logged a view no matter how much of the video is watched, reflecting increased standardization since the study was initially published last June. Interestingly, both Youtube and Yahoo! Video, which previously had stricter, IP address-based constraints, joined the majority of video sites by lessening their standards to count everything once the video starts playing. It appears that Blip and Metacafe are lone holdouts to a stricter, IP address-based standard. There is also some spotty disagreement (DailyMotion, Howcast) on whether to count embedded views and how they are counted.
“That a standard is starting to emerge, with big players like YouTube embracing it, is great news for content creators trying to monetize their videos and relying on views data to sell ads,” commented Brett Wilson, Co-Founder and CEO of TubeMogul. “That said, further transparency and standardization would be ideal.”
About TubeMogul
TubeMogul is an online video distribution and analytics company serving video producers large and small who need independent information about video performance on the Internet and an easy way to deploy their work to the Web’s top video sharing sites. TubeMogul’s analytic technology aggregates video-viewing data from multiple sources to give video producers improved understanding of when, where and how often videos are watched, measure the impact of marketing campaigns, gather competitive intelligence, and share the data with colleagues or friends. The company’s Load & Track service allows users to upload videos once to TubeMogul and automatically deploy them to as many of the top video sharing sites as they want, within the users’ specified accounts.
