• by kyle , Daisy Whitney , June 1, 2009

The biggest knock of television ratings has been that they are antiquated. So why then are the new media digerati trying to imitate that which they have scorned by creating a new online metric that imitates the standard TV one?

Media agency Mindshare recently partnered with online video advertising network YuMe to create the "Internet Gross Rating Point," or iGRP, specifically so marketers can compare their online videos buys to their television buys. But isn't online video supposed to be the renegade child forging new and innovative ground in measurement?

Well, perhaps not. Traditional metrics, for all their imperfections, have served as the backbone of advertising measurement for years.

The business needs a bridge right now between the scattershot array of online video metrics and the handful of antiquated, but still important, television metrics, says Jordan Levin, CEO of multimedia production studio Generate. "The business needs some sort of standard GRP," he says.

With iGRP, advertisers can compare campaigns across mediums, but they can also combine them. They can marry together the reach and frequency for both Web video and TV marketing to produce an aggregate number, Mindshare reports.

Mindshare and YuMe aren't alone. Online video programmer Break Media is working with some of the largest agencies to partner on demographic guarantees so they can draw an apples-to-apples comparison with television, says Andrew Budkofsky, senior vice president of sales and partnerships. "We're also funding third-party research studies to measure the effectiveness of campaigns to clients so clients can be more confident shifting dollars into the online video space."

Maybe TV ratings aren't so reviled after all.