August 04 2006

New 'Internet TV chart' launched

While this new chart doesn't carry the authority of pronouncements from RAJAR, Nielsen or established terrestrial TV audience monitoring, it should be in the bookmarks of Marketeers looking to keep a finger on the pulse of web antics, spoofs, teen trends and emerging sensibilities.

WorldTV.com's charts are now available online - covering the activities on YouTube, Google Video, Digg and some 50 other sites.

"We believe the time has come for a new service, born of the Internet, to track the best and most popular videos online", says Alx Klive, Founder WorldTV. "We want to combine community ratings, with Internet viewing figures, and editorial subjectivity, to provide the ultimate user-friendly snapshot of what's hot in video on the Internet".

This is the key to the interest in this service. Not only can marketers get a snapshop of this fluid, changing area but they can also see the ratings that the downloads are attracting.

A further interest is that the data source (and the ratings) are drawn from the most technically literate and web-savvy group of (potential) customers - the 'technorati' if you like. And, like the real Technorati.com the coverage is skewed to those savvy net-users - the ones who are difficult to reach with 'standard' advertising.

The chart is currently based firmly in North America, but it's interesting to watch from both a trends perspective and because so many of these video clips will be phenomena in the English-speaking web world.

The full text of the press release is reproduced below.

Ian Jindal Source: WorldTV.com press release. Full text:

Launch of Internet TV Charts TORONTO, ON - August 3, 2006 (INB) -- With the success of online video sites such as YouTube, Google Video, and more than 50 similar video sharing sites, there is a need for people to be able to more readily find the most popular videos on the Internet. With rapidly increasing volumes of Internet TV content (user- generated and otherwise), the desire for editorial and other services that help guide people to the best content, becomes progressively more apparent. In the same way Nielsen and TV Guide have provided TV ratings charts for traditional television for decades, Internet upstart WorldTV (http://www.worldtv.com) feels there is a clear need for a chart that tracks the most popular in Internet television. "We believe the time has come for a new service, born of the Internet, to track the best and most popular videos online", says Alx Klive, Founder WorldTV. "We want to combine community ratings, with Internet viewing figures, and editorial subjectivity, to provide the ultimate user-friendly snapshot of what's hot in video on the Internet". The WorldTV Weekly Internet TV Charts pulls together the most popular video clips online from four different sources - YouTube, Google Video, Digg, and Videosift. A new chart is released each Sunday evening at 7pm EST. Editorial filters help remove objectionable content, content that is in foreign languages, and content that is highly watched, but lowly rated by Internet viewers. The service combines the latest in web service technologies, with editorial subjectivity. Upgrades in the coming days and weeks will see additional controls to remove objectionable content, and the addition of a daily chart for the most popular Internet videos. The kinds of content that are most popular at the moment include funny homemade videos, videos showing the skills of soccer player Ronaldinho, and clips from late night TV chat shows.