ComScore has just introduced Media Metrix 360, a new approach to digital audience measurement that the digital marketing intelligence co says will eliminate the long-standing confusion about the differences between internal client metrics and publicly reported third-party audience estimates. The new 360 service accounts for 100% of a website’s audience by offering a ‘panel-centric hybrid’ solution – a combination of person-level measurement from ComScore’s proprietary two million-person global panel and website server metrics.
Pegged as the next generation of global digital audience measurement, the new service reconciles traffic metrics reported from client server-side and ad server data, with hybrid audience measures that can be used for improved planning of online media campaigns and for evaluating the delivery of those campaigns more completely. By combining standalone panel and server-side metrics, the proprietary methodology calculates audience reach in a manner that it says will not be effected by distortions like cookie deletion, cookie rejection and non-user requested traffic.
With ComScore’s Canadian Research Advisory Council playing a key role in the development of the new web-reporting methodology, the new service will initially be implemented here in Canada with July 2009 data and in the US published with August 2009 data, followed by the UK (where August 2009 data will be published in September 2009). Other countries will see the introduction of Media Metrix 360 beginning in Q4 this year.
‘We already use ComScore extensively for audience measurement and tracking user behaviour online,’ says Robert Jenkyn, VP digital solutions at Media Experts and member of ComScore’s Canadian Research Advisory Council, in a release. ‘We welcome hybrid measurement as it will allow us to gain a greater insight into consumers’ site-side activity, which will deepen our usage of the service.’
A newly developed ComScore ‘universe report’ will also provide visibility into the entire universe of Internet usage, supplementing the traditional home and work universe data provided by ComScore’s existing Media Metrix service with server-side data to account for a site’s complete usage, including access of websites from mobile devices and computers outside of home and work like Internet cafes, schools, libraries and other non-private locations. Users at these locations can account for a significant percentage of total website traffic, ranging from 10 percent to more than 50 percent, depending on the particular market and country.
ComScore president and CEO Dr. Magid Abraham says Media Metrix 360 represents the web’s first true measurement currency. ‘The past few years have seen the rise of global Internet markets, the emergence of new distribution platforms, and a substantial increase in media fragmentation and niche audiences,’ he says in a recent release. ‘Through ComScore’s ‘panel-centric hybrid’ approach to audience measurement, we are able to combine the best of both worlds of panel and server-side measurement to bring the industry a comprehensive accounting of the complete digital media universe.’
The new methodology, which has been implemented in ComScore’s Video Metrix service, continues to segment audiences by demos, geo-demographics and more than 1,000 variables, and support audience analytics tools, including reach and frequency as well as custom unduplicated reach calculations.
