If one lives in the US and spends US dollars, then, over a period of time, one instinctively understands the value of the US currency. What $1 is worth, what $100 is worth, etc. There are a myriad of “metrics” that help in that understanding, from one’s take home salary, the price they pay for an apple, to the price of the apple the next day, even the price of a so-called organic apple to one from Nob Hill.

So, if one’s spending US currency daily, and lots of it and travels to the UK and is required to spend UK Sterling, what’s the immediate reaction? Convert the Pounds Sterling into the native currency and compare. Obvious eh?

Well, a joint study by the 4A’s and the ANA that can be found here, titled Marketers Need Metrics to Understand Digital Media says that on a scale of 1-5, with 5 being the biggest problem, the biggest problem is having metrics to properly allocate media spend among traditional and digital media.

At this point, I’d normally lace in some sarcasm, followed by some humour, but I’ll just point you to our iGRP whitepaper on our site.

- Jayant Kadambi

The rationale goes that an online video GRP calculation that is comparable to the television GRP calculations that have been used for years will help media buyers and planners place larger buys online because they will have an idea about the relative gross impact of one medium or vehicle versus the other.

Also, we hope, it will facilitate access to more data and metrics about the nascent online video advertising business. And we pride ourselves on continuing to provide more and more analytics and metrics to our advertisers.

It does seem the obvious question to ask when advertising on TV content online is how does this compare to the reach and frequency results of my ad on TV content offline. Given that TV GRPs are measured based on US households watching a particular TV show for an hour and they receive millions of viewers, and online GRPs will have trouble measuring households, the comparison is not like comparing a Fuji apple (my favourite) to a Macintosh apple, it’s more like comparing an apple to a kumquat. But nevertheless, we feel it’s useful to start the dialogue regarding a standardised GRP reporting mechanism and provide that information to advertisers. And even though the online universe remains smaller, sometimes by far, than TV, the more (useful) metrics the better, we feel.

Take a look at our whitepaper on calculating an online video GRP. We welcome the feedback…

Jayant Kadambi