Recently, a certain blanket with sleeves - otherwise known as the Snuggie - has become a national phenomenon, infiltrating pop culture with its ubiquitous infomercial, celebrity Snuggie sightings and Facebook groups. It has inspired a massive cult following and even Snuggie-themed social events, including Snuggie Bar Crawls across the nation.

Recently it was reported that more than four million Snuggies were sold during a three month period, with orders continuing to flood in making it difficult to keep the item in stock.

As this national obsession continued to take hold, my curiosity eventually got the best of me. I decided to take a look and see how Americans were turning to the Internet to satisfy their Snuggie craving. Not surprisingly, traffic to Snuggie-related sites peaked during the holiday season in December, with FreeSnuggie.com reaching 1 million visitors that month and GetSnuggie.com reporting about half that number.

Searches for Snuggie also peaked in December, with almost half a million searches performed for the term “Snuggie,” up from 110,000 searches for the term in November. (By comparison, there were 180,000 searches for the term “ShamWow” in December - pretty impressive when you consider that Snuggie lacks the marketing muscle of ShamWow’s spokesman extraordinaire, Vince Offer.)

Obviously I was intrigued by the Snuggie. I mean, how many times have I sat cold on my couch under just a normal blanket cursing the fact that it rendered my hands useless to perform simple tasks such as answering my phone, flipping the TV channel or even holding a baby? I had finally had enough and caved, purchasing my own Snuggie.

I must say, it was worth it.

OK, this is very amusing so check this out!

It would seem that out of all U.K. visitors to Evertonfc.com, 46.8 percent come from the North West, compared to just 16.8 percent of all U.K. visitors to Liverpoolfc.tv! These numbers are based on 3 months worth of data rolled-up into a single month average (in this case ending January 2009). So in other words, these numbers are not affected by seasonal fluctuations, or temporary-regional migrations, they are literally “averaged out over the course of the season to date!”

Ergo, the majority of Liverpool’s U.K. fan base isn’t really made up of Liverpudlians at all!!! In fact, 20.3 percent of U.K. visitors to their site hail from LONDON! Say it with me...Unbelievable Jeff!

For a more qualitative measure, just ask Everton manager David Moyes, who gave this comment when he first signed up with the club: "I am from a city (Glasgow) that is not unlike Liverpool. I am joining the people's football club. The majority of people you meet on the street are Everton fans. It is a fantastic opportunity, something you dream about. I said 'yes' right away as it is such a big club."

Oh, and if you are wondering where I am while I’m writing this post by the way: London (part of the 4.8 percent of visitors to Evertonfc.com who reside here, I’m afraid!)

For more than ten years, there have been debates in the Internet measurement space about panel-centric versus server-centric measurement. Recently the IAB released its Audience Reach Measurement Guidelines, a document two years in the making that will go a long way toward clarifying the measurement issues. On the very first page, the IAB document lays out several “foundational principles,” the first of which reads:

“Client-Initiated counting is crucial. These guidelines rely on the central concept that counting should occur on the client side, not the server side, and that counting should occur as close as possible to the final delivery of an ad to the client.”

Audience counting should occur on the client side. I think that pretty handily settles the panel-versus-server debate, at least with respect to audience measurement.

Still, in the past eighteen months or so, some of our clients have expressed to us an interest in what has come to be called “hybrid” measurement. The thinking behind hybrid measurement is that some combination of panel data and server data would enable development of a measurement solution offering “the best of both worlds.”

Panel measurement is best for understanding the behavior of people. Server measurement is best for getting at the behavior of, well, servers.

So we at comScore sat down and asked ourselves this simple question: Can panel measurement be improved by the introduction of server data? And the answer is: “Often, it can”.

So in June of 2008, we introduced a beaconed component to our Video Metrix service, allowing us to enrich the panel-derived people data with census-level server data providing total stream counts and allowing us to include a measurement of niche audiences. We use the panel to develop the kinds of metrics that only people measurement can generate: person-level duplication across entities, “intensity” metrics (streams per person, minutes per person), audience composition (i.e., demographics), and duplication — the disentanglement of reach from frequency, the fundamental metrics that still drive most media planning and analysis. (Our Video Metrix Reach & Frequency module will be out soon.)

Inevitably, as various “hybrid” offerings come to market, it will become important for the industry to understand the pluses and minuses of each approach and to realize that not all hybrids are created equal. For example, some companies today claim to offer a hybrid solution, without even having a panel. Frankly, I find this to be disingenuous; the thought process that led our marketplace to collectively endorse the concept of hybrid measurement was, quite clearly, the idea of deriving the benefits of panel measurement AND the benefits of server measurement together. Lose the panel, and it is not a panel-server hybrid.

It is easy to talk a good game about models and inference, about making numbers up, sanctioned by the requisite number of PhDs. (No offense, doctor.) But eighty years of audience measurement tells us that, in order to derive valid and reliable audience measurement, you have to MEASURE THE AUDIENCE. And maybe I’m hopelessly old school, but as far as I can see, the audience that advertisers, publishers and marketers are interested in reaching is still comprised of people.

There is no substitute for measuring people.

This is why we at comScore fundamentally believe in person-centric measurement, and why our renditions of hybrid measurement will be panel-centric hybrids.

Our chairman Gian Fulgoni has encapsulated this philosophy recently with the phrase “Power to the People!” Which is the title of a new comScore White Paper, one that I’d urge you to read.

Earlier this week I had the opportunity to present at the SES NYC show on a session called “Searching for a Solution: The Impact of Today’s Economy on The Search Landscape”. Overall, the show was very well attended with many great questions that were raised afterward. Invariably, a key theme was what impact the economy was having on search and if people were truly going to spend less and how marketers should adjust accordingly. The video below highlights some of the key themes that were discussed.

I had the pleasure of giving the opening keynote at the OMMA Global-Hollywood Conference in Los Angeles on Monday. I thought my presentation was well received and detailed comScore research showing that display advertising can generate increases in site visitation, trademark search, and both offline and online sales - even in the presence of minimal clicks.

In the video below, I discuss with Daisy Whitney NewTeeVee the challenges with using the click as a metric as well as the growing use of video advertising.

Fourteen billion is a big number, and we like big numbers. They have impact. They are bold. They make great headlines (see above). But when it comes to making online video audiences targetable and valuable, big sweeping numbers can mislead us into thinking that video is complicated, or that streamers are somehow hard to reach in meaningful, measurable and scalable ways.

So how do we crack open the black box?

To begin, understanding audiences is key. Demographic composition – based on real people, not cookies or machines – is crucial to ensuring that target audiences are capable of being reached via the planned streaming channels. And it’s dangerous to just make media decisions off a website’s demographic breakdowns – remember, frequently between 20-50% of a site’s video traffic occurs through syndication and viral distribution.

Further, understanding the nature of video experiences themselves is mission critical. Not all video experiences are created equal, and therefore cannot be used to achieve identical – or even similar - ends.

Put loosely, an online video experience can be broken down in two ways:
1) As transportation
2) As education or information

A transportational video experience – aka “Get me outta here!”– occurs when a viewer engages with online video in order to be swept away and consumed by the media experience. The program is the end in itself.

This can be in the form of a bite sized SNL clip parodying Sarah Palin designed to wipe momentarily the world’s woes (or in the case of the Palin clip, accentuate them but with humor). It can also take the form of longer format programming such as Lost, Heroes and Desperate Housewives, where traditional broadcast programming is repurposed for the web. In both cases, the viewer is looking to be entertained and to be immersed in the world of the show, and to receive a familiar experience sweetly reminiscent of turning on the TV or going to the movies. In this zone, the viewer will probably be reachable by ads, albeit passively. Not to abandon the program right in the throes of Peter Petrelli being flung from a window by Sylar in Heroes, but to hear the message and, if it resonates, potentially look for more information afterwards or otherwise hold the information in the psyche, filed for when it is needed when it comes time to pick brands and make purchases. In this instance, the effect of advertising is ‘soft’, and more likely to result in benefits such as increased brand awareness, brand lift and – ultimately – a purchase.

An educational or informational video experience on the other hand – aka “make me smarter, more interesting, informed or otherwise more able to be competent at something” – occurs when a viewer actively seeks out information that can be shared in video format. Here, the video is the means to an end – be it news information, cooking a meal, picking a travel destination, learning how to play the guitar. Something is shared with the viewer that he/she didn’t know prior to watching, and the viewer is in “action mode”.

Ads can become highly targetable – and content can encourage the type of engagement that prompts the person to do something – with this kind of programming. Imagine that you were researching or planning a holiday to Mexico, and wanted to see some video clips about the beaches along the Caribbean Coast, or the best cabanas. Targeted to this video, is a special overlay for Expedia offering cheap flights to Cancun. Or an offer for a package deal vacation, or 3 night stay in a beachfront cabana. Or even for travel insurance. The chance that the video experience would cause you to act is far greater than if you were treated merely as if you were part of a mass audience, none of your likes/dislikes or intentions discernible from the next person. Similarly, the viewer that avidly watches how-to-play guitar videos might be a great target for live concert deals or real-life guitar lessons, having already put up their hand and shown interest.

The takeaway here is this: the size of a network measured via streaming numbers is important to show scale and the potential reach through video advertising. Audience demographic profiles are also crucial in getting past “streaming” and to the people who are actually capable of being reached. But there is also a lot to be said for understanding both the content and the context of videos when considering this aspect of a campaign, in order to optimize the information that audiences are already volunteering about what they’re up for, and what they’re into.