2 0 obj And the ad networks who get to include your monthly traffic numbers into their Comscore total unique visitors count wouldnt like you to think so. This is whats intended, at least. The point here is you need to be logical about this topic and follow the numbers. There is no question that online privacy is a farce, and hopefully as individuals continue to see how easily their privacy is exploited online, we learn to keep things closer to the vest. Youre (most likely) giving a larger portion of your revenue onto the partner. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. You may opt-out by. They need you. This iswhy the demographics information from comScore cant actually be applied to the real analytical data. Advertisers and publishers do often care about Comscore rankings but not in the way that many might assume. (These were not your words but my take on them) comScore's I would love to show you screenshots, but of course I love my job more than I love posting on my blog, so Ill stick to my NDA. Well, its a bit of everything to be honest. Private Networks). These members, representing a cross section of the The bigger that the network becomes (in the eyes of Comscore / Quantcast / etc), the better the deals theyre able to negotiate. Very informative article. The website to be tracked must have the comScore tag propagated throughout the entire website in the same way you would a GA code and this will allow comScore to accurately measure your traffic, pageviews and other information that you a standard analytics program would collect. Afterward, Comscore gave the tracking pixel away for free to paying clients. network, without requiring any further action on the I deal with comScore and recently Quantcast on a regular basis, and quite honestly Ive come to the conclusion that they are really nothing more thanpeddlers of educated guesses. Intentional grammatical error for effect . one buyer, 50 surfers must be monitored. I also feel that the possible error-range in their evaluations has the potential to me massive, hence unfairly denying someone possible revenue dollars due to their metrics net being too small. So as unbelievable as that may seem, a whopping 60 cents (or more) of every dollar is being gobbled up by one of the hundreds of entities in the chart you see below. I would say one of the biggest errors the digital ad industry makes is confusing or blurring the lines between actual site metrics, vs site demographics beyond what is provided in the browsers header information. challenges of measuring audiences in a fragmented landscape. Both companies have an extensivehistory of lawsuits, accusations and general privacy violations as they try to push the boundaries of what they collect and the collection processes. But, recent acquisitions by large tech companies, like Moat, have demonstrated the value of tracking across the ecosystem; as both publishers and advertisers have long relied on an arbiter for campaign delivery. This means 30 mins of inactivity adds up to a new session. i track with comScore now, and everything youve discussed answers a lot my own questions. You can read more about what they do from a company perspective at http://www.quantcast.com/how-we-do-it. Now dont get me wrong, as youve mentioned Comscore does what they can to ensure their data is as accurate as possible, but its still educated guesswork at the end of the day and nothing you stated in your comment refutes that simple fact. If you took the time to read my article and took the time to post a great comment, I will certainly return the favor by reading and commenting on your thoughts as well. So if your comScore reporting is telling you the median age of your site is 28 and 35% of your audience is gamers, you cant ACTUALLY track who those people are and what parts of your site they are visiting. 4 0 obj I sent comScore a request with some of my questions and got back some great information directly from comScore: comScore measures people and not cookies or IP addresses as your internal data does. For December, e.g., gAnalytics is showing me Age and Gender info on 39% of my 5mm directly-measured visits. 1 0 obj Comscores panel measurement system appears to be accurate and effective. If a publisher doesnt include Comscore pixels on their pages (often because they slow down sites and can cause errors), theyll not be counted in Comscores rankings. Whats more important nowadays its the audience itself and how valuable that is (directly) to advertisers. to other third parties. We need to acknowledge that the trends are moving away from proprietary data to freely available big data. xo0#mhE< JlBsN[hsgr{G)Ne1:# B0-%_\50/w,>WP8t68| 80dAt=,I@#gAqm=jq h >}$$ 9iAym]/k-zQ Were very new to comscores analytics. The gross majority of advertisers likely have no idea what they are and pay little attention to these services. Is that Comscores whole business model is only beneficial to those digital properties in the Comscore top 50. Arent panel-based inferences what prematurely killed off Arrested Development, My So-Called Life and predicted Star Wars would bust? endobj Its used daily in media kits, presentations, infographs, marketing plans and many other mediums for everything from entertainment to purchase proposals. So strip down everything Comscore marketing has told you and lets get down to basics. Most networks are into the billions of ad impressions per month, and so thats what they say advertisers are looking for when they want to negotiate. All Rights Reserved, This is a BETA experience. Of what I know, the educated guesswork you are referring to is actually based on a statistically significant sample of panel members who have actually filled up a form and clicked to register to become a panel member. They can make significantly more accurate inferences about web habits, demo- and psychographics. and other transactions on the Internet, a sample in Out of curiosity, I tested Comscores numbers for a digital property in the Comscore Top 50 (Facebook.com) to see if the recorded number of monthly unique visitors was comparable. Well, they in fact have a couple of primary methods. Im more concerned with how that sample is collected than the size. Is it a lack of options? endobj endobj Plus, they have additive rules of attribution. Publishers sometimes forget that they can only assign traffic to one place. Were looking to learn more so to regulate better the traffic we provide to clients. There are very few scenarios where you needa large ad network to sit as a middleman. Additionally, their panel method defines pageviews across all sites. First off, thank you for taking the time to post your comment on my article, I dont expect everyone to agree with me and I am always open to new perspectives. endobj This blocks you from forming other network deals. Multiple browsers:Comscore eliminates visits from multiple browsers and multiple screens (mobile, desktop, etc.). [ 9 0 R] Where do they get the demographics information that almost seems to come out of thin air? The whole purpose of that is to make themselves look bigger to attractbigger advertisers. But because it seems so simple and innocent, they fail to mention the potential downsides. This measure comes 100% from the tags on your site. That being said, Comscore is still a big name and well-respected by many in the ad space. Comscore is a global media measurement and analytics company. 10 0 obj 3 0 obj Thanks . Yet, those same players dont add any value back in. no information about the content on each Web page, including But its wrong just the same as the guess work of market research companies. MUCH less than 1%. Real site metricseasily definedis the collection and reporting of REAL visitor data to your website by a piece of analytical software, the most popular in the world being Google Analytics. So, whats the point if youre a digital publisher? endobj <> According to research by Technology Business Research, of every dollar spent on programmatic advertising only 40 cents reaches actual consumers. When I asked a comScore rep how exactly age is calculated by comScore for the demographics reporting, they confirmed the above: Demographic information is gathered from our panel. They offer 3rd-party measurement of audience demographics and performance for media across multiple mediums. comScores transparency in answering your questions re their methodologies is impressive. <> Unique US visits and page views are nowhere close to GA or server log data, often with a full 50% or more error margin despite both the GA and CS tags firing from the same include across the board. q&knX.J>f(>!&jfipyD Q9+aX%($:5.H4f+A%Y(`3;>'lhdlfD%e3>'bW8+]eR;:pX?Q\_Gr^WPZxByqF4]?rh\I'TA (Photo by Ben Gabbe/Getty Images), PwC Cloud and Digital Transformation BrandVoice, 4 Steps To Help Your Kids Build Smart Money Habits, How To Earn Cash Rewards For Everyday Spending. It doesnt come up often enough. Traditionally, the tracking of audiences has been wrought with criticism. Its your audience at the end of the day, and never let anyone (person or ad network) try to convince you for a moment that you need them to succeed. And the fact that you signed an exclusivity contract? <>/XObject<>/ExtGState<>/ProcSet[/PDF/Text/ImageB/ImageC/ImageI] >>/MediaBox[ 0 0 612 792] /Contents 4 0 R/Group<>/Tabs/S/StructParents 0>> Comscores rankings are founded on the audience measurement services they sell/provide to publishers. We count these cookies and then we use the people in our panel to understand the following: Based on our findings from the above criteria, we then assign an average Cookie Per Person ratio for that site. Brad Adgate is an Independent Media Consultant. Custom Panels for businesses seeking the most I have 2 questions and please excuse the naive nature of them. account numbers, user ids, passwords, etc.). Comscore and Quantcast How they work and why they are the gold standard of guess-work. Stating as fact we measure people not cookies is bold. 8 0 obj comScore is everywhere and has become masters of educated guesswork, ninjas of not-so-naked truth and warriors of whats up online. It sounds like youre a fan of internal web analytics and self-stated data. Most ad networks typically make you sign a contract to confirm youve formally signed over your traffic to live under their networks umbrella. Disclosure, I worked at one of the mentioned companies. You get a massive potential error margin. Once this traffic is assigned, the ad network can negotiate advertising deals for the network at large and for your individual website. <> GA uses the REAL data from your REAL visitors, records and collects that anonymous data and provides you easy-to-readformats of that traffic information in a vast palette of reporting options. endobj Any webmaster can see the effect of this phenomenon in Google Analytics simply take a massive data set where GA will use a small fraction of sample data (OK not ALL webmasters have sites big enough to do this, but I do) and youll notice the data integrity starts to suffer as compared to breaking down the analysis into small sets and less sampled data. Required fields are marked *. The main differentiator between Comscore and other web analytics solutions (like Google Analytics) is that their primary goal is to measure exactly who an audience is and their consumption behavior. 2 million members and adds thousands of people per day. JFIF ` ` ZExif MM * J Q Q Q C We know that its nothing but educated guesswork, yet multi-million dollar deals are lost and won because of what comScore has to say, more so than REAL numbers such as the metrics provided by Google Analytics for example. Hasnt more direct measurement gotten us House of Cards and Orange is the new Black? The most vocal complaint? Dont sign contracts if you have the option to avoid them. But generally speaking, these aspects of Traffic Assignment Letters are true. How do you feel about your online privacy or about comScore and their metrics? get right of entry to persistently rapidly. This demographic information is carefully projected to the census (Site measurement). thx for sharing this. Thats fine. endstream But that actually doesnt mean an advertiser wont target an audience on their site. <> Ask your ad network if you can split test their ad management against another provider. Comscore, on the other hand, has a 3-second window to qualify as a visit. To do this, I went to one of Comscores competitors, Similarweb. The author of two separate novels, Allen is a developing marketer with a deep understanding of the online publishing landscape. ways: One quick look at the Display Lumascape will show you how overwhelmingly bloated ad tech is. Really good PR I guess. Objectively speaking, Comscores track record doesnt help its cause. I have compared many of the matrix reports against real data sources and I can tell you the inaccuracies are frightening on some of the reports. Unless its a total random sample of the entire population, its going to be very skewed. Help! Due to theseasonality of ad rates, fluctuations in ad demand, and frequent Google Core updates, if you test one ad network in one month, and then another in the next month, thats not a fair comparison. Additionally, you cannot sign any other deals where you sign over your traffic to a ComScore etc. This difference is the main factor behind Comscores lower traffic numbers. <> that measure merely thousands of people simply are not The Forbes Worlds Most Influential CMOs List: 2022, Sony Licenses PlayStation-Based Toys And Collectibles To Spin Master, Going Live And Immersive Is The Next Frontier For Musicians, Movies, Artists And More, Surprise: Netflix Loses Subscribers But Not As Many As Predicted, Netflix Q2 Revenues Up, Subscribers Down, But Not As Much As Warned, As Amazon Overhauls Prime Video Interface, Keeping It Simple Is Getting More Complex, Daughter Of 9/11 Victim On Donald Trumps Saudi Golf Deal: This Is Blood Money Youre Taking, MSNBCs Joe Scarborough: Fox News Has Left The Trump Train. I dont see this panel as a true representation of the population. This includes every site Some of the things the panel methodology can register unique visits across: The panel is then weighted and projected to the home and work Internet universes in the United States, which allows the behavior of panelists to be projected to the U.S. Home and Work Internet user populations at large. comScore partners up with several technology brands to create and maintain this software, such as Permission Research, Opinion Square and VoiceFive Networks. endobj secure content, without which it is impossible to capture Welches Jobportal hat die meisten Unique Visitors laut ComScore | Online-Recruiting.net, comScore: Facebook now holds the top two positions among app users in the U.S. | DARE, comScore: Facebook now holds the top two positions among app users in the U.S. | Ad Pub, comScore: Facebook now holds the top two positions among app users in the U.S. - Hybrid Apps | Web Apps | Mobile Apps, Comscore unveiled - Marketing & Technology Blog, Who's Really Winning The Search War? Comscore or anyone else can use any terms they want (estimation is a popular one) but strip away the buzzwords and this is guesswork. They then average out that information with the number of uniques and page views you have and their advanced algorithm provides you with Gold Seal demographics or what I call educated guesswork. as supermarket purchasing or automotive registrations) Both comScore and Quantcast use proprietary algorithms they use to try to make educated guesses about the age of the user based on their internal measures and then displaying that person the ad. A lot of what you are saying here is intellectual masturbation and unfortunately untrue (No, I do not work with either of the above mentioned companies). return for valuable benefits such as server-based virus Everyone else was angry because they had to pay Comscore $10,000 or keep having their traffic counted the previous way. There is no question that if you plan to work with ad agencies on premium ad buys for your website, you have no choice but to tag with comScore if you plan on playing with the big boys. Comscore traffic numbers are lower than those in Google Analytics mainly because of differences in tracking methodologies. Comscore makes estimations based on the pool of panelists that are tracked via plugins or cookies. stream How does it know what color your poop is, how old your car is and how much you make a year? Non-human traffic:Comscore ignores (or eliminates) bot traffic, and Google Analytics counts all visits regardless if its a bot or a real user. When someone opts into the comScore panel, they are required to fill out a short questionnaire where we gather demographic information for themselves as well as other people in the HHLD who will be using the metered computer. comscore need, with a panel that currently numbers more than to help shape the future of the Internet. What do to when thinking of buying a website Basic Research to avoid getting ripped off. comScore has positioned itself to be the leader in demographic research and through aggressive business propagation and smart marketing have made it as common and standard to digital ad planning as TVs are to a consumers home. These have to be personally owned by the panelist (or household) to qualify them as home panelists. Therefore, you wont know for certain who was better. 2. So how does this part of the magic happen? comScore technology is a breakthrough in two fundamental The idea behind 3rd-party audience tracking is to bring transparency to media and marketing, so businesses can use data to drive growth. Do you have any other suggestions for traffic providers who want to cut their traffics junk down? This CPP is updated every single month for every single entity we report on. Once again, this is guesswork as they do not have access to ANYONES actual revenue numbers, not even the panelists. x+*@02LDX*$r{&)+@ r5 <> information regarding a participants Internet So, advertisers that DO use Comscore when buying through an agency will still target audiences on publisher sites that dont use Comscore or their competitors. 12 0 obj because the look-to-buy ratio for many commerce sites Anything beyond that, is quite honestly guesswork. This means that to capture just Comscore also has a revenue report that will estimate (guess) gross advertising revenue and the names of each advertiser or ad network running on a site. We have member profiles with information provided directly and via permission granted to us for more than 1mm individuals. comScore then uses that data to determine total people online, geographic location, income, age, and other factors and then apply that information to massage their research panel stats and generate an accurate global or US demographic.