5 comments

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  christopher

  1 year ago

  interesting problem, except no one is interested in solving it...even revver probably. don't they only pay if someone clicks through on the ad at the end of the video? they don't pay for views as far as i understand it - they share the ad revenue.
  
  so knock up your view stats all you want (though i agree a page serve shouldn't be counted as a video view), it's the ad revenue that matters. if your friends are clicking through on ads for you, revver doesn't care because they're getting paid to.
  
  so the only losers are the companies paying for advertising. probably not going to find a lot of sympathy for them...
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  Carlos Granier-Phelps

  1 year ago

  @Christopher, I'm not really sure how Revver actually pays (will look into it). But you're right in that there seems to be no interest in solving this problem.
  
  I'm sure the advertisers would like accurate numbers, though. Why aren't they doing something about it?
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  christopher

  1 year ago

  guess it depends on the model. for tv adverts, sure you want to know how many people are actually watching - at least with click-thrus you don't care how many people are watching, you only care how many end up at your site.
  
  beyond that, some advert models only pay when someone clicks through a buy-link and actually purchases (so the compensation to the referrer is more like a finders fee).
  
  in either case, view metrics don't matter, except as bragging rights. so the real question is: are view metrics tied to revenue?
  
  if not, then they're only good for public appearances - much like gross numbers for film box office. who knows how accurate they are, and really, unless you're a gross points holder, it's all about the net - which isn't readily available information.
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  Carlos Granier-Phelps

  1 year ago

  @ Are view metrics tied to revenue?
  
  Certainly not in the way they are measured now. But they could be very valuable if done correctly.
  
  If click-thrus are your thing, then I guess it doesn't hurt to measure views incorrectly... that's not what you care about. But if we want internet video to generate real revenue and evolve into a serious medium, then something needs to be done.
  
  Video producers need to know a lot more than "how many people viewed the page hosting their video." They need to know how many people watched through it and where -if at all- they got turned off by it. The same goes for advertisers doing product placement, and traditional advertisers as well who want to know how their ads are viewed.
  
  And that's the important point here... we should be as interested in *how* people experience our content as in *how many* do.
  
  The tools to make these measurements are already available. Why aren't we using them?
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  christopher

  1 year ago

  good point - if metrics aren't tied to revenue, why aren't they? especially since they could be. it would be helpful to know exactly what people are watching.
  
  it seems to me (not being in advertising), that in some ways you're dealing with an industry that is used to not knowing. they've never known how many people were really watching their ads - how many are dvr'ing, going to the bathroom, talking on the phone or turning off halfway through their program or simply lying on the nielsen reports.
  
  so you're mentioning an extension of the knowingness of advertising. good idea obviously, but not surprising that the industry hasn't charged forward with it.
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