Each month, several companies release viewing figures for online video. This month was no exception, although the huge difference in figures for Hulu over the last quarter shows there is still much work to be done in the field of online video metrics.
Online Video Metrics
Online video metrics, the study of traffic and viewer numbers to the various online video companies, is clearly a tricky business. The figures are released every month by different companies, most notably Nielsen, comScore, and Quantcast. Unfortunately, all three sets of figures tell a different story.
The figures for April were released earlier this week and taken individually didn’t really offer too many surprises. YouTube is still way out in front, MTV saw an unexplained increase in viewer numbers, and Hulu, well it really depends who you listen to in Hulu’s case. The U.S.-only video site may either be doing really well or really rather badly, depending on which company you choose to believe.
Hulu Hullabaloo
Nielsen counted 8.9 million visitors to Hulu in March, while comScore counted a rather more impressive 42 million. Nielsen also suggests the number of unique visitors to the site has been consistently dropping since February: from 9.5 million to 8.9 million to 7.4 million. But during the same period the number of video streams have risen from 309 million to 348 million to 373 million.
These figures could potentially be accurate if each hardcore Hulu-user recently started watching more streams while the casual user dropped off entirely, but I can’t see this being the case. Which poses a problem for Hulu as despite having its own viewer figures it relies on third-party companies to provide the industry and the people who provide it with the revenue it needs to exist with the correct figures.
Important To Advertisers
If metrics were just used as a measuring stick to shake at competitors then this really wouldn’t matter too much but there is, of course, more at stake here than that. Traffic, viewer, and stream figures are used by advertisers to determine whether they want to buy slots on that site or not. Poor figures for the month or a trend downwards could scare off potential clients.
The problem is that each company uses its own methods for collecting data. Nielsen uses numbers provided by a panel of viewers and extrapolates the total figures from their usage of various sites. Quantcast, on the other hand, takes its figures directly from a piece of code embedded on the Hulu Web site. Others use toolbars, ISPs, and a variety of other methods as well.
Conclusions
According to The New York Times, Hulu isn’t too happy with Nielsen right now and has swapped email correspondence with the company expressing its displeasure at the possibly bogus figures. When asked to comment, Jean-Paul Colaco, the senior vice president for advertising at Hulu, would only diplomatically say, “there is more work that can be done with all of our research providers to ensure that online video metrics are accurately represented to users and clients.”
Hulu should be fighting these figures tooth and nail because showing the company trending downwards for the first time since it launched isn’t going to help shift advertising stock. The bigger issue is what to do to make sure all the Internet traffic measuring companies are reading from the same hymnbook – the current situation is just leading to confusion for all parties.
