New Ooyala tool offers publishers deep psychographic data on viewers

Online video platform Ooyala has rolled out a new tool for publishers to measure the performance of their content, tracking video performance across audience-driven segmentations like age, gender, educational background, hometown, political affiliation, interests and even brand preferences.

The new Custom Analytics with Business Dimension Reporting, which went live last week, allows publishers using Facebook Connect to create more targeted and relevant video viewing experiences for their users.

"We're focusing on helping to enable publishers to understand how content is being consumed," Alex Holub, director of product management at Ooyala told FierceOnlineVideo. He said the platform so far had generated strong interest among publishers like Miramax and a variety of Ooyala's customers who see the ability to customize the data for publishers as critical.

"Each business we interact with has their own needs that, obviously, focus on their individual business," he said. "We need to give them the ability to customize the info they're getting."

Holub said it's not just the demographic data that publishers want; it may be other factors like the time of day a video is watched or whether a video does better above the fold of a page or below it.

"If we have that information, we can optimize where content should be placed," he said. "It's a rich set of metrics customizable for each business."

Holub said Ooyala expects broad interest in the analytics platform, from consumer brands to print publishers to new media companies.

Despite the depth of the psychographic data being collected, Ooyala maintains that there's little chance of privacy issues being raised. On the Facebook user side, the platform protects privacy by collecting data based on tags and not on individuals.

"Privacy is always a concern," said Holub. "We don't record any specific user info that has any unique identifiable pieces.

For more:
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