Tubular Labs launches first ecosystem-wide video content rating system

Tubular’s new Video Rating

How well is your branded video doing online?

That’s the key question online video intelligence provider Tubular Labs wants to answer with the launch of its Video Ratings.

The Mountain View, California-based firm said this is the first third-party rating for engagement and views that is based on the entire video ecosystem. It hasn’t been done before, co-founder Allison Stern told me, because “it’s hard to do, and these are still early days for [online] video.”

She added that her company’s Video Rating system monitors public data on about 100 million videos, 25,000 brands, 335,000 influencers with 250,000 or more followers and three million “fans” who have between 250 and 250,000 followers, on YouTube, Facebook, and Vine. Any video is fair game, although brands — of which about a hundred are Tubular customers — are of course more interested in their videos or their competitors’.

The ecosystem will be expanded steadily to include other venues, Stern said, and eventually to encompass the online universe of about two billion videos that the main Tubular platform tracks. Only linear video — recorded or live — is tracked, not interactive or 360-degree video. Measurements are made via APIs and, in some cases, through partnerships.

The basic goal is to give brands a way to measure how well their videos are performing compared to other videos and other categories. One metric, called ER30, shows an engagement rate compared to an average per platform or an average of all platforms, such as 2.2 times more engaging. Engagement is a sum total of likes, comments, shares, subscribes and tweets.

The number of views in a 30-day period is captured in a metric called V30, although a publisher can also receive an average number of views in that period for all of its branded videos. There are no measurements on, say, video completion rates or viewing times.

The ratings are available to Tubular subscribers, who Stern said pay an average of about $50,000 annually.

About The Author

Barry Levine

Barry Levine covers marketing technology for Third Door Media. Previously, he covered this space as a Senior Writer for VentureBeat, and he has written about these and other tech subjects for such publications as CMSWire and NewsFactor. He founded and led the web site/unit at PBS station Thirteen/WNET; worked as an online Senior Producer/writer for Viacom; created a successful interactive game, PLAY IT BY EAR: The First CD Game; founded and led an independent film showcase, CENTER SCREEN, based at Harvard and M.I.T.; and served over five years as a consultant to the M.I.T. Media Lab. You can find him at LinkedIn, and on Twitter at xBarryLevine.