Nielsen Online is very close to launching a platform to monitor the number of downloaded media served through iTunes and other systems.  While Nielsen and others track the views of streaming video, third party monitoring of downloaded video does not exist, as far as we understand.

In this interview with Beet.TV, Jon Gibs, VP for Media Analytics for Nielsen Online says that his company is readying a codec to track iTunes downloads.  This will be an important development as more advertising will be inserted into downloadable media and marketers need to have third party analytics.

I spoke with Jon at Advertising 2.0 earlier this week in New York,

— Andy Plesser