Commentary

Online Video: The Future Is Crystal Clear

  • by September 11, 2012

It doesn’t have to be this hard. It’s possible, right now, to deliver massive amounts of video to highly targeted groups of consumers and track and report on every view in real time. Metrics can be meaningful, not menacing. Results can be timely and specific; value can be tangible and learning can be immediately actionable. We don’t have to settle for sample site lists, sagging completion rates, poll-based targeting, or videos running on piracy sites and in offer walls.

The technology to do away with all this is already here—in fact, it’s been around for some time. The barriers are all cultural. They are the remnants of our industry’s print and broadcast heritage, and, I predict, data will be their undoing.

In the movie Moneyball, Brad Pitt plays the part of Billy Beane, the real-life general manager of a beleaguered professional baseball team. Unable to compete with big-budget teams like the Yankees, Beane does a radical thing. He throws away the traditional methods of player evaluations and just focuses on the data that builds a winning team.

Going forward, the video advertising business will do the same thing. Print and broadcast mythology will be replaced by facts. Vague Excel spreadsheets will be supplanted by intuitive, tangible figures that speak directly to advertisers’ bottom lines, and the sites and properties that deliver the most value will receive the lion’s share of the budget.

This is already happening. The questions are getting harder; the demands are growing more stringent, and advertisers’ tolerance for fuzzy reports and shoddy placements is waning.

Some day soon, I predict, one major advertiser will step forward and say, “I’m not buying another frame of online video until you can tell me exactly where it is running.”

When that happens, everything will change. The games will end and the real work will begin. I can’t wait for that day to happen, I don’t think I’ll have to for very long.

Mitchell Reichgut, CEO, Jun Group

1 comment about "Online Video: The Future Is Crystal Clear".
Check to receive email when comments are posted.
  1. ben Bernstein from Startcut, September 13, 2012 at 7:09 a.m.

    Nice article. If you want to see how we have tried to address the issues you pointed out in your article, please check out our analytics dashboard at www.startcut.com. There you can see what videos are working for your company, which aren't and on what networks they are being viewed

Next story loading loading..