What we can measure becomes important

Mediaweek reports that, come December, MSNBC.com will join ABCnews.com, Heavy.com and Video Egg in serving advertisements attached to specific video downloads and move away from its current sponsorship model for monetizing attention to video. The article quotes an advertising executive as saying that certainty of attention is what makes the new pricing method advantageous to the spenders. “Once that commercial or video is initiated on the computer, it’s an actual impression, not an estimated one,” Jeff Ratner of MindShare Interaction tells Mediaweek.

Article writer Shahnaz Mahmud notes that the certainty that a specific ad has been downloaded, and presumably viewed, differentiates the online ad from the broadcast version, in which the buyer must accept that some fraction of the audience actuallyviewed any given advert.

The prime target for these linked-video adverts appears to be the young male of whom, we are told 70 percent told one survey team they had viewed a download within the last seven days.

The Mediaweek piece does not refer to behavioral targeting but it cannot be long before the video advert can be linked to a behavioral profile inferred from the cookie on the viewers’ computer. Imagine that so-and-so has been tracked as viewing a succession of boating shows; are they a candidate for a speedboat advert? That is the stuff of which advertising dreams are made.

Alas for the journalist this is hardly good. The watchword is boobs — which could refer both the intended audience and the physical trait most likely to fetch its attention (In an earlier posting, Hot Zones vs Hot Tubs, I lament about the anti-news bias in pay-per-impression versus general sponsorship advertising.)