Social Video Standards Need to Look More Like TV

Every month, 14.9 million creators (including media and brands) upload 100 million new videos, generating more than 2 trillion views across YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Twitch. Social video keeps expanding as a viable means to grow global business for both brands and publishers alike. But without measuring the content similarly to the way TV inventory is evaluated, it’s hard to tap into those same billion-dollar budgets. This ever-changing media environment has been pushed along by sweeping technological advances. Audiences are more global, mobile, and social than ever before. And anyone can be a creator, whether they’re traditional or digital-native publishers, brands or influencers, or building up media empires from scratch. Because they're shareable in nature, social videos have previously been evaluated along the lines of likes, comments, and views. Those metrics remain part of the conversation, sure. But relying solely on them is what holds social video back – especially as these platforms are progressing toward more premium inventory. Mismatched Metrics Current social video measurement presents no way to standardize views cross-platform; some platforms have adopted IAB and MRC standards of at least two consecutive seconds, while others have not. For Facebook and Instagram, it’s three seconds. YouTube counts video views once play is initiated, but ad views are counted differently (30 seconds, or the duration of the ad). That leads to inconsistency from platform to platform, plus there’s no way to deduplicate audiences or gain further insights about their viewing habits. Content creators are forced to grade their own homework, relying on mismatched metrics and small panels that don’t reflect digital realities. Publishers with large social video audiences are held back from full revenue because they can’t prove the complete picture of their audience – which today includes social – to advertisers. Establishing Social Video Value It's time for an evolved approach to measuring social video. To show social video audiences at parity with those of traditional media channels, there need to be uniform market standards that attach similar values regardless of global location, screen, or platform. Deduplicated audience engagement and time-based metrics like total and average watch time normalize attention and reach globally, clearly reflecting how an audience cultivated through social platforms can stand toe-to-toe with some of traditional media giants… and how agile traditional media companies keep pace digitally. With trillions of video views generated across the world’s largest social platforms, it’s essential for the buy- and sell-side to have TV-like time-based metrics to transact on and deliver ROI with confidence. On TV, metrics like watch time, average minutes watched, and unique viewers have long been a staple of how money (and lots of it) exchanges hands. When these standards grow into essential social video measurements, combined with audience demographics and location, what’s truly stopping all of this video content from being viewed with the exact same revenue capabilities in mind? Social video doesn’t have to stop being itself. It has advantages inherent by design, just as traditional TV does. But in order for social video’s strengths to be valued on par with TV’s, measurement needs to look more similar. Known standards will give publishers and brands access to a massive audience (and resulting revenues) they’ve previously missed out on because they’ve lacked a way to understand that audience and model ROI.

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Social Video Standards Need to Look More Like TV

Rob Gabel

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Rob Gabel