• by Karlene Lukovitz , October 21, 2020

Tubular Labs has introduced a deduplicated audience and time-based system for standardized measurement of video audiences across Facebook and YouTube.

The audience ratings product provides standardized metrics for validating and comparing audiences by minutes watched on a second-by-second basis, as well as deduplicated unique viewers, according to Tubular, a video measurement and analytics platform. 

Tubular is also working on extending the audience ratings to Instagram and Twitter. 

Lack of standardized cross-platform social media video metrics — and lack of TV-like metrics, in particular — have impeded advertisers’ ability to make knowledgeable decisions about appropriate allocation of budget dollars to video campaigns with digital publishers. 

As a result, digital publishers are missing out on an estimated $13 billion in annual advertising revenue, according to a study by Tubular and partners.  

De-duplicated viewership capabilities also enable publishers and advertisers to see audience overlap across platforms and the geography for each channel and piece of content.  

To develop the standardized metrics for digital video audiences, Tubular last year co-founded the Global Video Measurement Alliance (GVMA) and has been working with its members: ViacomCBS, Ellen Digital Network, Discovery Inc, Vice Media, BuzzFeed, Group Nine, Digitas, Corus Entertainment, Brut, Mattel, Webedia, and Freeda Media. Those companies are already using the metrics in the marketplace. 

The new audience ratings enable “an unprecedented view into our audience’s digital attention and the attention of global audiences more broadly,” facilitating digital investments that produce greater value, said Dervla Kelly, senior vice president of marketing and head of so.da, Corus’ social digital agency. 

The standardized metrics will help broadcast research teams address the core challenges of “how to gain the best understanding of where audiences are going, how much attention they’re giving and how to aggregate cross-platform views of networks or shows” — as well as size and compare social video to other advertising platforms, said Howard Shimmel, former chief research officer at Turner and current president of Janus Strategy & Insights. 

Digitas North America CEO Jodi Robinson added that the agency will use the social video engagement trends surfaced through GVMA and Tubular to inform digital video programming, marketing and advertising investments for clients.