Demerzel’s bias: I work for an online advertising agency, I love working with Google Analytics, and I just plain love working with analytics data.

Found from Andrew Sullivan’s blog originally on The Guardian:

Web statistics are complicated at the best of times, and video throws up even more problems. If a site embeds a piece of YouTube video, for example, should that user or that view be credited to the host site or the site where the video lives? Once a download is on someone’s desktop, how does the broadcaster know if it is ever watched? And how can broadcasters best track on-screen advertising?

To make sure there is an understanding (and to clarify what I presume Jemima Kiss was referring to) web statistics in the form of stat counters is rather basic whereas web statistics in the form of web analytics (Google Analytics, Site Catalyst/Omniture, WebTrends, etc.) is complicated, but that does not mean that measuring data is any less valid due to its complexity.

The first question asked is quite precise in the difficulty of how to credit the user/view and is important to bring up (as it is sadly still too new to the media moguls, then again, better late than never). This said, the question assumes the form of whether the credit can only go to one the host site or where the video lives–as if partial credit is not allowed. If I host an amazing video, but do not work to expand on it, and yet someone else puts it up onto Youtube, they certainly should get credit as well–as to how much is the true complicated issue (partially at least) that is keeping the writers strike going.

The latter two questions is where I wonder why people seem to obsess over how the Internet supposedly cannot accurately measure data (fyi: this is not what Jemima Kiss goes into), yet do not realize that at the same time, data from the Internet can be tracked and analyzed better than TV–the tracking just has to be set up properly (not to mention carefully) which can be time consuming and may require some online advertising agency help.

With cookies, scripts, Google, rootkits/adware/spyware (think of Sony’s stupidity there doing that–and just to be clear I am fully against rootkit protections or Microsoft’s WGA) tracking and analyzing data is far easier and more accurate than TV–it is just that the big media players have yet to get their tracking in gear and presume that it is complicated as such.