Title: Real Time Analytics that Drive Personalization and Monetization
Description: As content owners and marketers move beyond the basics of getting video published on the Web, online video is becoming increasingly performance based. The discussion will focus on how content creators, brands, and creative agencies can effectively use this data to drive successful video campaigns.
Date: Thursday, November 12, 2009
Moderator: Larry Kless
Panelist: Edmond Lau (Ooyala), Matt Cutler (Visible Measures), Jeff Jordan (Omniture), and Michael Shimbo (Ticketmaster)
Why are analytics important?
The panel started off answering that question. Jeff Jordan said that, "at the end of the day, it's about differentiation," and user engagement metrics are core to knowing your audience. Matt Cutler said that "we're all in this together," and that effective metrics help tie into business results and can create brand lift. Edmond Lau noted that analytics help create a tight feedback loop that is data driven and that online video has that opportunity to monetize online video ads. Michael Shimbo said that analytics provide a wealth of information about what Ticketmaster customers are consuming, and that the more you know about your audience the better the revenue stream.
What are we measuring?
Jeff said that there's no magic bullet on what to measure but it's a combination of things that we are trying to monetize. Matt noted that many customers are really interested in reach and engagement. Edmond pointed out that the key metrics differ based on the use scenarios. Media companies care about impressions and click through rates and how best to insert ads. For brand markerters, video engagement is more meaningful and engagement reports help you see what parts of the video people watch, what part they seek or skip over. Michael said that there is no shortage of analytics and asked when is it too much since it could be overwhelming and hard to decipher. But knowing how to assemble the data, leverage it and have a qualifed user to interact with the data helps drive business decisions.
Many customers don't like the answer, "it depends on what your business is," when they really don't know what they want and just want a specific list of variables to measure. Jeff offered the advise, "start where the money is and work backwards." Jeff also had another Tweetable quote in regards to measuring social media metrics, "If you don't have social video then you don't have a video strategy."
The discussion moved into answering questions about behavorial targeting and personalization, analytics for the three-screen strategy, media buyer sophistication, how to choose an analytics provider (Omniture, Visible Measures, Ooyala) and the importance social media metrics.
Edmond posted on the video on the Ooyala blog and had this to day about the session,
"We discussed how analytics would shape the online video industry in 2010 and beyond, and how actionable analytics that closed the feedback loop between video publishers and their online audiences would be the major trend. Online marketers looking to build their brand would continue to improve their ability to understand engagement and demographic data about their users. A more complete understanding of their users would then empower them to fine-tune their video experiences and brand advertising to reach larger audiences and generate more conversions. Media publishers seeking to monetize their content through ads would benefit through the development of user profiles and preferences built from their past behavior, the behaviors of similar users in their demographic, and their current behavior on the webpage. These profiles could be used to power data-driven decisions for ads targeting or video recommendations."
Special thanks to Ooyala for inviting me to moderate this session and big thanks to Shalini Gupta for all her work at organizing it.
I also interviewed Jeff Jordan following the session about social media metrics and video marketing and will post the video sometime soon.
See the related Guest Post from Tim Hawthorne on my other blog: Online Video Publisging [dot] com: Made to Measure - How to use Online Analytics Tools to Measure the Effectiveness of your Online Video
