Digital video audience measurement company Tubular Labs announced Tubular Audience Ratings, which it said provides cross-platform de-duplicated, time-based measurement across social media platforms.
Tubular Audience Ratings delivers second-by-second minutes watched and de-duplicated unique viewers across YouTube and Facebook at launch and the company said it plans to add Instagram and Twitter.
Tubular said the new metric should unlock billions of dollars in social video advertising revenues.
"Tubular's new metrics are the first of their kind for social video, and bring parity to the convergent TV arena where media owners and brands need to measure TV and digital alike," said Tubular Labs executive chairman Greg Coleman. “No modern media company or brand can invest in digital video across platforms without these time-based and de-duplicated cross-platform audience insights.”
A study the company conducted estimated that there was social video attention worth $13 billion that is currently un-monetized because of measurement based on criteria other than audience attention.
“Audience Ratings’ capabilities answer a lot of simple, yet important questions that have lingered for years, but until now have been virtually impossible to answer,” said Neil Patil, chief commercial officer at Tubular Labs. “Now we’re not just delivering a better way to evaluate video content and audiences, we’re giving the marketplace an even better way to compare, contextualize and make informed business decisions.”
Tubular Labs approached developing its new measurement product with industry input by co-founding the Global Video Measurement Alliance in 2019. Members include ViacomCBS, Ellen Digital Network, Discovery, Vice Media, BuzzFeed, Group Nine, Digitas, Corus Entertainment, Brut, Mattel, Webedia and Freeda Media.
“By collaborating with the GVMA we will be able to keep close tabs on the pulse of culture through global social video engagement trends surfaced by Tubular Labs, and then leverage those insights into recommended digital video programming, marketing and advertising investments to benefit our clients,” said Jodi Robinson, CEO at Digitas North America.
The key metrics in Tubular Audience Ratings are minutes watched and deduplicated unique viewers, marking a shift to audience measurement from content measurement. Tubular conducted 600 data science experiments while developing its ratings scheme.
By measuring the minutes watched across platforms, Tubular said it is enabling the marketplace to evaluate the performance of content in a way that’s more comparable to the audience attention metrics in the convergent TV arena. Time-based metrics eliminate the need to rely on disparate view count criteria provided by social platforms, enabling content producers and advertisers to make better investment decisions.
Tubular Audience Ratings also provides a clear picture of the undisputed audience for content and content publishers across different social platforms. This enables publishers and advertisers to illustrate overlap across platforms and the geography for each channel and piece of content.
"A top challenge for broadcast research teams is 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,” said Janus Strategy & Insights president, Howard Shimmel, a former chief research officer at Turner. “With true de-duplicated uniques and actual minutes watched for audiences across social platforms, Tubular’s Total Audience Ratings empowers media companies to invest in digital video and transform their multiplatform businesses with supreme confidence. It will also enable advertisers and agencies to size and compare Social Video to other key advertising platforms.”
