BrightRoll Blog

By Tod Sacerdoti

In July of 2008, I penned a byline for MediaPost’s Video Insider that addressed an increasingly hot topic in industry circles: how to reach TV-sized audiences online. In an era of ‘TV Everywhere‘ talk, and growing focus on online video metrics, the need for better standards around measurement has become vital. In many ways, it helps to look at online video ad buys in much the same way as we look at TV ad buys.

Unlike traditional GRP, iGRP (the Internet Gross Ratings Point) addresses many of the same metrics that TV buyers are familiar with, but packages them for the Internet. As more brands devote their ad budgets to hybrid campaigns that include TV and online video buys, or entirely scrap TV buys for video campaigns, I’m glad to see that iGRP is being pushed as an industry standard for measurement.

Consumers are increasingly watching content across many different platforms. To reach them, advertisers need to understand how to best harness the power of the Web and television, and be able to accurately measure the mediums against each other.

As I wrote in my piece, online video offers the best of both worlds – measurable performance coupled with massive audience aggregation. Why not leverage the strengths of the medium and package it in a way that the bigger buyers understand?

Nine months later, it’s heartening to see more of our industry peers signing on to the iGRP standard: This week, YuMe announced their “coining” of the iGRP term. While they weren’t the first to discuss this online video advertising standard, these types of visible stands are exactly what the industry needs to mature and thrive.