Viacom, Corus & More Join Global Video Measurement Alliance

Viacom, Ellen Digital Network and Corus Entertainment have joined the Global Video Measurement Alliance (GVMA), a joint effort to establish new digital video measurement standards, starting with social video.

These three new additions join VICE, BuzzFeed and Group Nine as additional founding members.

Since its founding in January 2019, GVMA has spent recent months collectively working together, participating in closed-door meetings, reviewing technical challenges and actively co-developing content measurement solutions with the Tubular Labs data science and engineering teams. Tubular Labs has now revealed the first two new global, cross-platform reach and engagement metrics in co-development with the GVMA: de-duplicated unique viewers and minutes watched. When applied alongside social video metrics of views, comments, shares and followers, these metrics are meant to provide the full global picture of what the world is watching and how they engage with content.

“Viacom Digital Studios has achieved incredible growth engaging a new generation of passionate digital-native audiences across the leading social platforms,” said Kelly Day, president of Viacom Digital Studios. “As we continue to invest in audience development and original premium programming from our flagship brands, we look forward to working with the Global Video Measurement Alliance to establish unified methods of measurement for social video.”

“Tubular Labs has been a crucial solution for reporting to our partners on content effectiveness and video performance. We’re excited to participate in the GVMA and this next step towards the unification of global content measurement, allowing us to fully understand, interpret and activate our extensive cross-platform global social reach,” said Michael Riley, general manager of Ellen Digital Ventures.

Dervla Kelly, senior VP of marketing and head of so.da, Corus’ social digital agency, added: “The standardization of social video metrics is long overdue, and we’re looking forward to co-developing the new sell-side metrics that will bring uniformity to digital video measurement globally.”

“When we initially launched the GVMA, Viacom, Ellen and Corus all immediately saw the value of bringing broadcast equivalent standardization to the world of digital video and were eager to help. They are all cutting edge players in North American broadcasting, who are investing heavily in digital video to reach next-generation audiences—already with much success,” said Allison Stern, co-founder and chief strategy officer at Tubular Labs. “We are grateful and excited to bring their minds to the GVMA.”

“Tubular’s new metrics in association with the GVMA are the first of their kind for social video. These metrics have existed for digital websites forever, and this is the first move towards parity for the research community,” said Howard Shimmel, former chief research officer at Turner and current president of Janus Strategy & Insights. “A top challenge for broadcast research teams is how to gain the best understanding of where audiences are going and how to aggregate cross-platform views of networks or shows. I’m excited to join the GVMA and address these challenges head-on. The announcement today is a major step forward for the industry.”

“With GVMA partners steering our metric development, we understand the value in eradicating duplicated viewers and more granularly monitoring minutes watched across audience segments or geographies,” said Rob Gabel, co-founder and CEO at Tubular Labs. “These new metrics will be a big step forward in unifying global content measurement, and our data scientists are up to the task as they’ve been working toward this solution for years.”

“Measurement technology has not kept up with the realities of media today: increasing time spent with video, millions of meaningful creators, publishers and brands born out of lowered barriers to entry, and audiences that are truly global,” added Neil Patil, chief commercial officer at Tubular Labs. “Our data science, engineering and commercial teams are working in lockstep with the GVMA to develop audience quality and engagement metrics that the market needs.”

Josh Cogswell, president of digital at VICE Media and founding GVMA member, commented: “The GVMA mission is to empower the future economics of video through co-development of universal measurement standards to unlock a more transparent, efficient marketplace. We are thrilled to welcome Viacom, Ellen and Corus into the fold.”