• by July 22, 2014

Now that we’ve covered the different kind of video metrics that are often overlooked -- from the content of the videos themselves, to the size of the players, to the presence of other videos on the page --we can finally discuss how to implement analytics so they can be put to real use.

Before the Campaign

Using a site list from a media plan or simply URL data from an old campaign, domains can be dug through and examined for content, player size and other ad clutter metrics that aren’t measured by standard viewability tools. By setting certain parameters for individual domains ahead of time, advertisers and agencies can eliminate potential brand safety or objectionable content issues as well as reduce the amount of inventory running in very small players before the campaign actually runs. The long-term result of this pre-campaign auditing and blocking is reduced risk advertisers -- which results in higher spends by brands over time as the effective risk-tolerant inventory pool increases.

During the Campaign

Indexing during, rather than before, a campaign allows different opportunities,  namely whitelisting, blacklisting and monitoring. Because video subject matter is often not related to the site that the video is on, agencies have to be super-vigilant so that they don’t run their client’s advertisements on content that is either not brand-safe or way off message. They can either set automated limits – like if any publisher shows drug use, then blacklist – or they can monitor the traffic and make subjective decisions as the campaign runs.  Many advertisers and networks may also be simply interested in monitoring the up-to-the-minute health of their campaign or video publisher network. This live data can be used in real time to evaluate, segment and curate publishers into more lucrative groups by matching content metrics with other traditional success metrics like completion rate.

After the Campaign

Finally, this same sort of data can be used by agencies after the fact to provide advanced analytics for their brand customers. These analytics can be evaluated for targeting and segmenting to optimize for future campaign success. Advertisers are starting to look and ask for content metrics in addition to what they are already getting in terms of demographics.