• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, October 26, 2011

Is an online version of TVs’ gross ratings point (GRP) the only way to get brand marketers to spend more on video advertising on the Web? That lingering question was taken up during a panel on the future of free TV content on the Web at OMMAVideo conference in San Francisco. For now at least, a Web equivalent of the GRP is the best way to bridge the gap between TV and online planning and measurement, according to Dounia Turrill, SV,P client insights at Nielsen.

That’s not surprising, given the research firm’s push to make its Online Campaign Ratings tool the de facto GRP for online advertising buys. “What the OCR does is try to marry demographics to impressions and get a GRP, which is more of an apples-to-apples comparison,” she said. “You can’t just plow ahead and change everything people are accustomed to.”

Bryan Noguchi, Executive Media Director, T3, however, lamented that marketers will turn to the “lowest common denominator” between broadcast TV and online video in the form of the GRP. Critics of an online GRP have long faulted carrying over the measure because it doesn’t take into account the greater complexities of the online world, including things like frequency-capping, actual impressions, behavioral targeting and different kinds of engagement metrics.

Jason Tsai, SVP, Director of Portfolio Management, Universal McCann, pointed to Hulu as an example of a company “that’s been really smart about tryign to understand the value of each impressions delivered and reduce the ad load relative to what runs on TV. That’s something I hope we’re going to see a lot more of in terms of understanding different kinds of deliveries,” he said.