TubeMogul: What Counts As a “View?” Depends On Who You Ask
First off, thanks to Howard for adding TubeMogul as a guest author this summer to write about online video, particularly about trends we see in the massive amount of video viewership data we compile. Our goal is to let the data speak for itself, and we appreciate Howard giving us another forum to do that.
Speaking of data, yesterday we released research clarifying what counts as a “view” across video sharing sites. This study was initially published last June to great fanfare, so we re-executed it under current conditions, this time testing 14 sites to see if views are counted for refreshes, watching more than half a video, watching a video to completion and watching embedded videos.
The results? To our surprise, all but three video sites we tested logged “views” once the player starts, no matter how much of a video is viewed. YouTube and Yahoo!, which formerly had stricter, IP address-based constraints, lessened their standards since last June, now counting everything once a video starts playing. Blip and MetaCafe are lone holdouts to a stricter standard.
The study was picked up by the Los Angeles Times, Silicon Alley Insider, NewTeeVee and others.
Posted on May 28th, 2008 | Category: Blip.tv, Video, YouTube | Comments Off
