Who's Actually Watching All Those Online Videos?

With the explosion of online video, thanks to the success of YouTube, the big question is how to track the videos as they are shared around the Web and how to measure their audiences.

Two companies showed off ways to keep tabs on what happens to videos, in an effort to help content producers make videos more compelling and sponsor-worthy.

Visible Measures of Boston tries to show what the audience is actually doing. A graph shows when a lot of people rewind the video to see part of it again, and when they stop watching it altogether. That helps show when people get bored watching something, and when they get very engaged--a useful feature for marketers trying to gauge the success of an online ad. Visible Measures also collects information on every viewer of every video, so producers can see on which sites the videos gained the most traction, and in which geographic areas they became popular.

Another company, TubeMogul, of Emeryville, Calif., released a new platform that lets content producers and owners distribute their videos across the web instantly. After uploading your video to the site, TubeMogul sends it out to as many video-sharing sites as possible. TubeMogul then collects data about when, where and how often videos are watched. For example, "Prom Queen," the show produced by Michael Eisner's start-up Vuguru, is distributed through TubeMogul, which in turn shows how well each episode or season is received by Web audiences. Amateur producers can also use the tool to show the popularity of their videos, a big help when trying to lure potential sponsors and other financial backers.

By Kim Hart  |  January 30, 2008; 5:00 PM ET  | Category:  Kim Hart
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