Linda Abraham (LA), CMO, comScore speaks with I-COM World Measurement News Blog author, Andreas Cohen (AC), about comScore's products and future
AC: comScore’s Media Metrix 360 is a hybrid approach to audience measurement, blending panel and site centric (server side) measurement, correct? There are a number of companies who have been using hybrid approaches in Europe for a number of years. How is comScore’s different?
LA: While the idea of blending panel and server measurement is not new, Media Metrix 360 is a ‘panel centric hybrid’ that is quite different from other approaches in a number of important ways. First, we’ve built a very rigorous process of leveraging our panel to reconcile and validate census data for audience measurement purposes. The unmatched size of our panel (2MM worldwide) provides quite a robust set of data that allows us to do this in a unique way.There are methods of counting for web analytics that don’t apply in an audience measurement context. As an example, for page optimization purposes, web analytics processes allow multiple items on a page to be beaconed and counted separately. If a page has a video, a widget, some flash content, each can be beaconed and counted separately, While this makes sense from a web analytics perspective, this should only be counted as one page for audience measurement purposes—and the counting method needs to be uniform across sites. By leveraging our panel, we can cross reference and verify the page counts, making sure each page is being counted once and only once, and that all pages that are counted are legitimate pages by audience measurement standards.
In addition, there are some very important dynamics between cookies and individual users that need to be taken into account. Cookie deletion is an obvious factor. Some hybrid approaches make general or ‘average’ adjustments to estimate the impact. Our research has shown that there is a lot of variation on cookie deletion behavior at the individual person level, and that it varies by both the size of the site and the frequency of visitation. Our methodology accounts for these factors. In addition, there are a host of issues related to allocating a given session to the correct person using the computer that are uniquely addressed with our method. Things like multiple cookies per user (from different browsers), multiple users per cookie, and multiple machines per user need to be taken into account. So yes, there are a lot of ‘hybrid’ approaches out there, but we believe ours is the first to leverage a panel in this way, and that we are the first to apply the methodology on a global basis. That’s why we refer to it as ‘panel centric hybrid.’
AC: What kind of adoption are you getting in the marketplace, and how is your approach affecting measurement? Is it true that going hybrid with comScore means a Web site is guaranteed to have higher audience figures than if it were measured by pure panel-based approaches?
LA: We’re quite pleased by the very strong adoption rate of Media Metrix 360. To date, we have 60% of the top 50 media sites in both the UK and Canada, and 75% in the US participating, with a long list of additional sites in each country that will be participating in the next 60 to 90 days. This confirms both that this is an idea that the market strongly supports, and also that we’ve made implementation very easy. Clients can either beacon with us directly, or they can leverage beacons that are already implemented for web analytics, either through Omniture or, for clients in South America, through Certifica, a company which we’ve recently acquired. We’re currently rolling this approach out in the rest of the world and indications are that it will continue to be well-received.
The question about the implication for measurement is interesting. The answer is that it really depends on a lot of factors. Clearly, for niche oriented sites, long tail sites, and for sites with a large work audience, we’re seeing increases in audience sizes with our hybrid approach. Work measurement has always been difficult for any panel, including ours, to measure well because many companies prohibit their employees from installing foreign code on their work computers, so sites with large at-work audiences are also seeing increases. For very large sites, we’re finding that the numbers are, in many cases, not very different than those we reported using a pure-panel approach. However, at the channel level, it varies. So bottom line, our panel-centric hybrid approach clearly adds an additional level of rigor to our measurement, but it’s difficult to predict the degree of the change beforehand.
AC: How are you addressing mobile internet usage? Are you also using a panel-centric hybrid approach?
LA: It is only possible to calculate the most accurate unique visitor number if you have a person-centric data source to combine with the census log traffic. The security constraints of mobile devices means that it is very hard to build a comprehensive and representative mobile metered panel. The ideal solution, as comScore has pioneered in the U.K. in partnership with the GSMA and the UK mobile network operators, is to use mobile network census data that include a unique and persistent ID for every user. Irreversibly anonymised mobile internet logs from all the mobile operators in a country can be aggregated and combined with demographic data collected with consent from a representative sample of mobile users. The GSMA, the mobile operators’ trade body, is initiating such projects in many countries under its Mobile Media Metrics program.
comScore Media Metrix 360 complements the GSMA Mobile Media Metrics data by providing the increasingly important Wi-Fi traffic from mobile devices, as this is not recorded in the mobile operator network logs. By using both approaches, comScore is able to report on unique visitors and their full behavior, whether at home, at work or on their mobiles, irrespective of the type of communication network used.
AC: In addition to audience measurement, I understand comScore has a growing ad effectiveness measurement business. Can you speak about that?
LA: Measuring the effectiveness of online ad campaigns is one of our fastest growing offerings. Even in—and perhaps especially in—a declining ad economy, our clients need to understand what kind of return they’re getting on their investments in digital advertising. While there is a lot of debate around what the ‘right’ ROI metric should be, our experience suggests two important ‘truisms’ around which we’ve based our entire ad effectiveness solution. First, there is no ‘one size fits all’ metric, and second, if there were such a metric, it is definitely not the click.
All campaigns need to understand the extent to which they hit their intended target. But beyond that, different campaigns can have different objectives. In some cases, branding, rather than direct response, is the stated objective. In other cases, driving people to your site, getting people more engaged at your site, or getting them to proactively search for your product is the goal. In other cases, transactions are important. Did people complete more credit card applications, request more insurance quotes or configure more cars. Yet in others, the only thing that matters is whether or not people bought more product and, if so, did those sales take place online or offline. Any or all of these questions can be important for a given campaign.
Our suite of products in this area, called Ad Effx, has 5 components, each offering a set of KPI’s that relate to one or more objectives in these areas. We believe offering a comprehensive set of metrics–allowing the client to determine which are their ‘money metrics’ for a given campaign–is the best approach. As cross-media measurement becomes more mainstream, we plan to continue to expand and refine the breadth and depth of these metrics.
AC: comScore seems to be expanding its geographic focus. Is this the case and, if so where do you see comScore heading? Do you plan to grow organically or through partnerships and acquisitions?
LA: Today, we’re already more international than most people realize. We have offices in the UK, Canada, France, Singapore, and Japan. There is no question that during the first 10 years of comScore’s existence, we’ve largely been developing our products in North America and the larger Western European markets. But we’re deliberately shifting our focus to the rest of the world. With the acquisition of Certifica, we now have a significant presence in Latin America, including offices in Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Mexico, Peru and Columbia. We’re also expanding our presence in Asia. What’s exciting for us is that we already have a global panel, and our products lend themselves to being scaled globally, while also enabling local customization. At the moment, we’re publishing audience measurement data for 41 individual countries. International expansion is a major growth area for us—it’s a question of which markets we go after first. We’re looking at all kinds of models to accomplish this—organic expansion, partnerships, reseller agreements, and acquisitions. From a global perspective, we feel we’re just getting started.
This interview was also published on the I-COM Blog, World Measurement News.