Blog RSS

comScore Welcomes Starcom MediaVest Group and Zenith Optimedia as Preferred Strategic Partners for Digital Campaign Ratings

webmaster@comscore.com (Ferry Gijzel) — Thu, 16 May 2013 20:58:00 +0000

This preferred strategic partnership with two leading agencies, both part of Publicis Groupe, is an important validation of the considerable effort we’ve put into making vCE the best in class product for digital campaign evaluation and optimization. The next generation enhancements we’re making to vCE will improve its speed and granularity, helping clients optimize their campaigns in real-time according to a multitude of demographic dimensions.

SMG and ZenithOptimedia noted that they selected comScore as a partner because it “provides us and our clients with capability and flexibility for a future where integration from multiple data streams and media convergence driven by mobility and social come center stage. [vCE] focuses on the right things for an increasingly digital future and will help advance the agencies’ respective Human Experience and Live ROI value proposition for our clients.”

comScore has made ongoing product innovation the hallmark of our strategy, and in collaboration with forward-looking partners such as SMG and ZenithOptimedia, we will deliver advertisers the multi-platform solutions they need – now and into the future.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements
This release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, including, but not limited to, expectations regarding the impact and benefits to comScore from the vCE family of products, financial or otherwise. These statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially, including, but not limited to: the features and characteristics of the products, the rate of development of the digital marketing intelligence, Internet advertising and e-Commerce markets; the growth of the Internet as a medium for commerce, content, advertising and communications; and the acceptance of new products and methodologies by the industry, including existing and prospective clients. For a detailed discussion of these and other risk factors, please refer to comScore's most recent respective Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Annual Reports on Form 10-K and from time to time other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC"), which are available on the SEC's Web site (http://www.sec.gov).Stockholders of comScore are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date such statements are made. comScore does not undertake any obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statements to reflect events, circumstances or new information after the date of this press release, or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events.

UbiquiTV: Video Fragmentation is the New Reality

webmaster@comscore.com (Ferry Gijzel) — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 15:35:00 +0000

The Digital Upfronts (aka “NewFronts”) have been dominating my recent conversations revolving around a single --albeit complicated-- question: “How much of my ad spend should be allocated to digital video?” For the uninitiated, NewFronts is an annual event that connects digital marketers and agencies with online publishers. It has its roots in the television “upfronts,” where the television networks showcase their upcoming seasons to ad buyers in an attempt to sell as much premium ad space as possible, as early as possible. To even begin to answer this question, one must grapple with the realities of today’s highly fragmented media landscape, which is enough to make anyone’s head spin. Understanding this new paradigm means being able to quantify audiences and behavior, and in many respects we are still at the early stages of that process. In the face of such uncertainty, it’s no wonder that answering these seemingly simple questions can be so perplexing.

And yet, they are also that much more essential when you consider the state of TV audiences today.

I recently read an amusing history of “fascinating” TV ratings facts that would “blow out your brain,” and while these jarring facts may be packaged with a laugh track, I can assure you it is no laughing matter to marketers.

A few of the more startling points in the article include:

The series finale of Cheers was watched by 84 million people, which is more than double the all-time highest rated episode of American Idol.
Modern Family is the second highest rated sitcom on television with around 10.5 million viewers. 90’s sitcom Sports Night was cancelled after two seasons on ABC because it only averaged 11.5 million viewers.
Seinfeld’s famed episode, “The Contest”, had more viewers the first time it re-aired than the combined number of viewers for the entire weekly modern day schedule on The CW.

The Platform-Shifting Digital Media Consumer

Download the infographic (JPG, 256 KB)
(PDF, 760 KB)

The first step in understanding premium content digital video is to wrap our heads around how consumers are accessing it today. PC-based online video viewing has been a mainstay for the better part of a decade, but only recently have we seen smartphones and tablets begin carving out their share of the digital video space. According to data from comScore Media Metrix Multi-Platform®, 28% of all premium TV digital video content is currently being accessed via smartphones and tablets. Desktops account for the balance.

More viewing platforms certainly means more complexity… but it also means greater opportunity. A growing number of consumers today are spending their time watching exactly what they want when they want it, which translates to a higher level of consumer engagement and a better environment for marketers to land their message. The increased availability of digital video also means more overall screen time for consumers, presenting more marketing touchpoints and opportunities.

UbiquiTV Enables Improved Media Allocations, More Opportunities

So while the realities of UbiquiTV are not necessarily bad news for marketers, the question remains as to how much they should invest in digital video. While there is never a one-size-fits-all approach to optimizing media allocations, there are some points worth considering:

Savvy marketers can more efficiently deliver target reach and frequency objectives when they plan holistically across channel vs. planning in each channel as a silo.
Specifically, layering digital video on top of TV campaigns can continue to build substantial incremental reach after the TV reach curves have flattened.
Digital video ads are about 30-40% more likely to reach Under 35 year olds than the typical online display ad, making this medium a valuable way of reaching these sometimes more-difficult-to-reach consumers.
When running market mix models, numerous marketers have found digital video to be among their highest performing platforms; perhaps because it delivers the sight, sound and motion of TV in a lean-forward environment.
While video monetization rates are not cheap and prices are increasing, 7 out of every 10 digital video content views still do not carry advertising, presenting an untapped opportunity for marketers.

The future of TV may be complex, but digital video is clearly going to be a meaningful and growing part of it. More importantly, there is value to be realized with digital video advertising right now. The marketers who most quickly develop the competency to optimize across channels will be at a significant advantage versus the competition.

comScore at the NewFronts: UbiquiTV is the New Reality

webmaster@comscore.com (Gail Ballantyne) — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 16:49:00 +0000

As content and distribution channels proliferate, the dynamics of how, when and where we view video has forever changed. Understand how the digital video market is evolving in the infographic below.

Download the infographic (JPG, 256 KB)
Download the infographic (PDF, 760 KB)

Multi-Platform Media Usage is Not a Zero Sum Game

webmaster@comscore.com (Ferry Gijzel) — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 13:31:00 +0000

But an important thing to remember is how my enjoyment evolved over time as I improved. The first time I broke 100 on the golf course you would have thought I just had my first child I was so excited, and from that point forward I couldn’t stop reserving tee times at every turn. One would think I would saturate my appetite for golf with so many rounds, but that wasn’t the case – the better I got the more I wanted to play.

This same concept applies to your media and internet consumption. Conventional wisdom would suggest that in this age of media fragmentation, usage of multiple devices – TVs, PCs, smartphones, and tablets – would inevitably cannibalize one another. After watching hours of TV, the last thing you’d want to do is pick up your tablet, stare at another screen, and start surfing the web, right? But in a similar fashion to my golf obsession and the impact my improvement had on that desire, evidence suggests that the more devices you use, the more media you consume. It’s not a zero sum game.

Engagement Begets Engagement

Think about the media brands you engage with most frequently on your primary computer. Doesn’t this selection of websites closely correspond with many of the apps on your smartphone or tablet? For the content you love to engage with, you’ll often seek out additional opportunities to engage if they’re available. Engagement tends to beget engagement.

But this line of thinking isn’t just conjecture; we actually have some interesting data to support this point. In a watershed research initiative conducted with NBC for the 2012 London Olympics, we recruited a panel of Olympics enthusiasts whose media consumption habits we could observe across multiple platforms to better understand how consumers engage with multiple screens throughout the day in today’s media environment. As the graphic below illustrates, the more platforms used to consume NBC Olympics content, the greater that user’s overall engagement. But perhaps more significantly, it wasn’t just that they consumed more content overall – in many instances those who used mobile devices actually spent more time consuming via the primary (TV) and secondary (PC) media channels.

Looking at TV (in this case the primary consumption channel), the average time spent per day consuming Olympics content for TV-only users was 4 hours 19 minutes. But that figure for TV begins to increase among segments accessing content via multiple devices, all the way up to 6+ hours for those who viewed the Olympics across 4 screens. While those who consumed Olympics content across multiple devices may inherently be more engaged viewers, it would also seem that the supplementary channels served to reinforce engagement with the primary channels.

Developing Integrated Multi-Platform Strategies Can Help Maximize Value

Often marketers and media companies will ask me if they need to have a mobile strategy. My response is that it’s better to have an integrated multi-platform strategy, with mobile just being one component of it. Now that may require developing some mobile-specific strategies – whether that’s building an app or executing a mobile ad campaign – but they should be developed with the broader picture in mind.

A more holistic understanding of audiences and engagement across channels provides insights to help design strategies that maximize value for marketers and media companies alike. Without understanding the waterfall of engagement that occurs with incremental device usage, opportunities may be overlooked to not only reach and engage larger audiences, but also to reinforce the value of their primary media platforms.

Key Trends That Are Shaping the Brazilian Digital Landscape

webmaster@comscore.com (Ferry Gijzel) — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 17:40:00 +0000

Android vs. iOS: User Differences Every Developer Should Know

webmaster@comscore.com (Wesley Jonker) — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 13:00:00 +0000

According to comScore MobiLens data from December 2012, Android currently owns the larger market share at 53 percent, while iPhone holds a strong #2 position at 36 percent. However, market share alone is not sufficient for driving development decisions because iPhone users have different characteristics that often make them attractive from a development standpoint. Here are some key differences in user dynamics between Android and iPhone users that every developer should know.

iPhone Users are Slightly Younger and More Affluent
iOS is popular among a slightly younger demographic than Android users, with 18-24 year olds representing 19 percent of all iPhone owners compared to 16 percent of Android owners. That said, Android users on the whole skew younger than the total U.S. mobile market, indicating that they still have a very attractive profile on this dimension. Another important demographic difference is average household income, with 41 percent of iPhone owners falling in the $100,000+ income segment vs. 24 percent of Android owners. With iPhones selling at a higher average price point than most Android phones, this difference should not be a complete surprise. Still, it may be an important differentiator for marketers.

Android Users Have Broader Content Category Reach, Despite iOS Users’ Higher Propensity
Not only do Android and iOS users look different, but they also engage differently with mobile content. iPhone owners are sometimes described as “power users” on their phones and are relatively more likely to engage in all major content categories than Android owners: 10 percent more likely to use social media on a daily basis, 7 percent more likely to access news, and 15 percent more likely to visit online retail sites. While iPhone owners engage with more content on average, the Android platform has a greater number of media users in each category. This of course poses an interesting dilemma for developers who must consider whether audience size or engagement is the more important determinant of success for their apps. Do they need to have a higher number of users, or do they want the type of users who engage more frequently? A lot will depend on how they intend to monetize the apps.

iPhone Users More Likely to Engage in M-Commerce
One of the more important mobile trends to develop over the past year is the emergence of m-commerce, where smartphone owners actually make purchases on their phones. Once again, iPhone users show a greater propensity to engage in this behavior with 23 percent having done so vs. 17 percent of Android owners. iPhone owners are also more likely to make purchases on their phones on a regular basis. These are important considerations for both retail app developers and those seeking to monetize via paid apps or in-app purchase.

iPhone Satisfaction Corresponds with High Device Loyalty
Device satisfaction and brand loyalty are differentiating factors that marketers, strategists, and developers also should consider since they, in part, determine long term market share. iPhone owners tend to think very highly of their devices, and as a result they are likely to remain iPhone users over time. Nearly two-thirds (62 percent) of iPhone owners are highly satisfied with their device, and more than 80 percent of them have previously owned an iPhone. Android owners maintain a fairly high percentage of highly satisfied users at 48 percent, but clearly not at the same level of Apple. Since the majority of Android phones’ hardware is not Google-branded, Apple’s tightly linked hardware and software may offer a certain branding advantage that engenders higher loyalty. Of course, Apple also has a history of excellent marketing campaigns that have cemented the brand’s iconic status.

Developers Should Think About What’s Most Important Before Developing an App
Android and iPhone offer the two leading platforms today, and each one possesses its own unique characteristics and advantages. Android’s lead in market share often means the potential for app developers to reach a larger audience, but iPhone makes up for this by boasting an attractive audience to marketers that tends to reflect more highly engaged mobile media users with higher income. Their strong platform loyalty also bodes well for their ability to retain and expand market share over the long term. Understanding and quantifying the differences between the users of each device can help developers make smarter decisions about which audiences and platforms to focus on in order to attract users, drive engagement, generate sales, and ultimately achieve their strategic business objectives.

2013 Digital Future in Focus Series

webmaster@comscore.com (Ferry Gijzel) — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 13:00:00 +0000

To guide you in navigating this Brave New Digital World, comScore presents its annual Digital Future in Focus series of global reports which provide industry-leading insights into the biggest trends and changes from 2012 and what they mean for the coming year.

2013 Spain Future in Focus		2013 Italy Future in Focus
	About the Spain Report Download Now		Get notified when available
2013 Europe Future in Focus		2013 Brazil Future in Focus
	About the Europe Report Download Now		About the Brazil Report Download Now
2013 France Future in Focus		2013 Future in Focus Digitales Deutschland
	About the France Report Download Now		About the Germany Report Download Now
2013 Canada Future in Focus		2013 Mobile Future in Focus
	About the Canada Report Download Now		About the Mobile Report Download Now
2013 U.S. Digital Future in Focus		2013 UK Digital Future in Focus
	About the U.S. Report Download Now		About the UK Report Download Now

2013 Italy Digital Future in Focus (April)
Futuro Digital Latinoamérica 2013 (May)

comScore Collaborates with Solve Media on ‘Native Insights’ Research

webmaster@comscore.com (Ferry Gijzel) — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 16:01:00 +0000

First, some background. For those who may be unfamiliar with Solve Media, they popularized the use of brand advertising into the context of the traditional CAPTCHA experience. Wikipedia describes a CAPTCHA in the following way:

A CAPTCHA is a type of challenge-response test used in computing as an attempt to ensure that the response is generated by a human being. The process usually involves a computer asking a user to complete a simple test which the computer is able to grade. These tests are designed to be easy for a computer to generate but difficult for a computer to solve, but again easy for a human. If a correct solution is received, it can be presumed to have been entered by a human. A common type of CAPTCHA requires the user to type letters and/or digits from a distorted image that appears on the screen. Such tests are commonly used to prevent unwanted internet bots from accessing websites, since a normal human can easily read a CAPTCHA, while the bot cannot process the image letters and therefore, cannot answer properly, or at all.

Rather than type in a jumble of random letters, the Solve Media approach asks users to type in a relevant brand message. An example of this experience is shown below:

Working together, comScore and Solve Media developed a new method of brand survey research that integrates within the organic flow of this experience so that rather than simply typing in a brand message, users answer a survey question as part of their CAPTCHA experience.

Following the implementation of this new approach, which Solve Media calls ‘Native Insights’ research, the initial results were dramatic in terms of driving responsiveness. In earlier research efforts, Solve Media’s brand surveys – which were dependent upon users clicking out of the CAPTCHA experience – delivered a response rate consistent with industry averages. The native insights research implementation, however, produced a level of survey response that was approximately 200x higher than the baseline.

The ability to generate extremely large sample sizes is significant for brand advertisers interested in measuring their brand impact online because it enables much more granular analysis. Survey sample sizes often limit the number of unique data cuts that can be performed for a particular study, but with this native research approach sample size constraints were virtually eliminated.

While it should be noted that this effort represents a unique approach that happened to work well within the context of Solve Media’s brand advertising platform, it opens the door of possibility to brand effectiveness research done at significantly greater scale than in the past. And any such applications that improve the ability of the research to produce actionable insights for advertisers represent a step forward for the entire digital advertising ecosystem.

Putting the Digital Future in Focus: Key Trends that Will Shape the U.S. Digital Industry in 2013

webmaster@comscore.com (Ferry Gijzel) — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 17:24:17 +0000

Social Media Market Matures as Focus Turns Toward Building Business Models and Financial Success

Americans’ usage of Social Networking sites continued to be dominated by Facebook, which accounted for 5 out of every 6 minutes spent online on these sites. Facebook’s 2012 IPO signaled a maturation of the social media market with a renewed focus on building strong business models and monetization streams. Several social media players also made waves in the public markets this year, including LinkedIn, Yelp, Zynga and Groupon, while others including Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest and Instagram (now part of Facebook) have all posted strong user growth as they begin to ramp up their revenue engines.

Share of Time Spent on Social Sites

Google Leads While Bing Grows Share in Search Market

Google continued its strong lead in the U.S. search market, while Bing managed to gain ground as the #2 search engine in 2012. The desktop-based U.S. core search market saw its first signs of flattening as an increasing number of searches shift to vertical-specific searches and mobile platforms.

Online Video Brings TV Dollars to Digital as Consumers Become More Platform Agnostic

The U.S. online video market also shows signs of maturing from a consumption standpoint, but monetization is picking up steam as YouTube accelerates its advertising efforts while traditional media players find success with TV commercial content. With the demand for high-impact video advertising exceeding the available inventory, look for continued momentum on the advertising side – particularly as targeting improves.

Digital Advertising Improves Accountability in Quest for Print and TV Ad Dollars

Nearly 6 trillion display ad impressions were delivered across the web in 2012 as brand marketers have become increasingly comfortable with a medium capable of delivering strong marketing ROI. Despite delivering so many impressions, comScore research showed that an average of 3 in 10 ads are never rendered in-view, leading to significant waste, weaker campaign performance and a glut of poor-performing inventory that imbalances the supply-and-demand equation and depresses CPMs. Through the continued adoption of a viewable impressions standard, the market is beginning to embrace a digital scarcity model that better aligns monetization with the value created by the inventory.

Smartphone and Tablets Carve Out Space in Multi-Platform Digital Media Landscape

Smartphones continued to drive the mobile landscape in 2012, finally reaching 50-percent market penetration in 2012. The Android platform also hit a 50-percent milestone as it captured the majority of the smartphone market for the first time. Meanwhile, tablets continued to gain traction, with 52.4 million U.S. tablet owners as of December 2012. The rapid adoption of smartphones and tablets, and consumers’ increasing use thereof, has resulted in a fragmented digital media landscape where the typical consumer now shares his time across multiple screens.

E-Commerce Gains at Expense of Brick-And-Mortar While Consumers Experiment with M-Commerce

Despite the backdrop of continued economic uncertainty, 2012 was a strong year for retail e-commerce. Throughout the year, growth rates versus the prior year remained in the mid-teens to outpace growth at brick-and-mortar retail by a factor of approximately 4x. Total U.S. retail and travel-related e-commerce reached $289 billion in 2012, up 13 percent from the previous year. While e-commerce continues to gain share from traditional retail, the first signs of mobile commerce affecting the digital commerce landscape are starting to emerge. In Q4 2012, comScore estimates that m-commerce transactions (from both smartphones and tablets) now represent approximately 11 percent of corresponding e-commerce spending.

We at comScore understand that putting the digital future in focus is of paramount importance to forward-thinking digital marketers. And with 2013 set to be another exciting year for digital, the time is now to understand the driving forces in the industry so that you can capitalize in the year ahead.

Click here to download your complimentary copy of the 2013 U.S. Digital Future in Focus report!

Facebook Graph Search: What Happens When Utility and Frequency Collide?

webmaster@comscore.com (Ferry Gijzel) — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 22:08:00 +0000

Habits are hard to break. Whether it’s smoking, drinking, or something as benign as leaving your dishes in the sink as opposed to putting them directly into the dishwasher, years of quickly broken New Year’s Resolutions suggest that permanent changes in established behavior are easier said than done. Such ingrained behaviors can manifest themselves in a variety of ways, from physical repetition to brand loyalty. Just try getting a Starbucks aficionado to go to Dunkin’ Donuts sometime…

Online habits are no different, and there is no more ingrained habit for most of us than striking that 10-key combination g-o-o-g-l-e-.-c-o-m in a single motion in about half a nanosecond. That hardwired habit is an influential source of Google’s search-related staying power. Ultimately the strength of this habit is a function of two interrelated variables: utility and frequency. There is value in either variable independently, but when combined they reinforce one another. Google clearly occupies the coveted upper-right quadrant on the utility-frequency matrix, and for Graph Search to become an unmitigated success it will need to shoot for a similar space.

Utility: Delivering Value to Consumers

Dictionary.com defines “Utility” as: something useful; a useful thing. I have a hard time defining Google’s value proposition better than that. Google is useful because it is very good at delivering its users with the right information in a highly efficient manner. With its scale advantages, it has plenty of useful user data to continually refine algorithm that ensure this utility remains strong from an informational standpoint.

The next layer of utility in search extends beyond information to incorporating social elements. As the amount of information indexed on the web continues its exponential expansion, social provides a useful filter to help surface the most relevant information. To enhance the overall utility of its searches, Google launched Google+ in 2011, giving a social infrastructure to all of its properties that would increase its ability to incorporate social signal within its search results.

With Graph Search, Facebook begin with a very strong social signal but less utility from a pure informational standpoint. This means that users, at least in the initial iterations of Graph Search, are likely to rely on it in instances when they specifically want information as seen through the social lens. Certain Graph searches may provide very high utility (e.g. “Which Sushi restaurants do my friends like in San Francisco?”) that directly influences your decision-making, but the question is how often they will make searches of this nature.

Frequency: Reinforcing Value to Consumers

Another key aspect to the “Google habit” is that it gets continually reinforced, day in and day out, just like brushing your teeth. (Actually, Google may even be more habitual than brushing your teeth because the average person conducts 3 searches a day but probably only brushes twice.)

Similarly, people who visit Facebook do it very frequently (about every other day on average) for a significant amount of time (about 6 hours per month on PC alone). This presents an enormous opportunity to develop Graph Search into a more deeply ingrained habit.

But the devil’s in the details.

Habit = Confluence of Utility + Frequency

Ultimately a new search habit will only arise if Graph Search can deliver at the intersection of high utility and high frequency. The upper right quadrant is certainly something to drive for, and it will require greater emphasis on the utility dimension if Facebook hopes to leverage its strength on the frequency dimension.

That said, Graph Search certainly provides unique benefits to users and incremental monetization opportunities to Facebook. Graph Search is a worthy exploration in the new frontier of search and it will be very interesting to watch it develop in the coming months…

This post was originally published to Search Engine Watch on 1/28/13.

Facebook Vaults Ahead of Google Maps to Finish 2012 as #1 U.S. Mobile App

webmaster@comscore.com (Ferry Gijzel) — Wed, 23 Jan 2013 18:00:00 +0000

While tablets are gaining steam at a rapid clip, smartphone apps remain the key drivers of media consumption in the post-PC paradigm with the majority of mobile Internet access occurring from smartphones and 4 out of every 5 minutes on smartphones spent on apps. The app space is highly competitive and it’s getting more and more important every day for media brands to ensure they are carving out that valuable real estate on consumers’ screens.

The latest comScore Mobile Metrix ranking of the top mobile apps by audience shows that Facebook finished the year strong to capture the #1 position from Google Maps. Of course Apple’s decision to replace Google Maps with Apple Maps on iOS 6 also caused a decline in Google Maps usage in October, which is largely responsible for the position swap. Meanwhile, Google Maps has been clawing its way back the past few months after getting reinstated on iOS 6, so look for the competition for the #1 spot to heat up as we head into 2013.

Despite losing the top position, Google maintains a strong leadership position in the app market with five of the top six ranked apps. Given the ubiquity of various Google services in addition to many being native apps on both iOS and Android, its strength should perhaps not come as a surprise. Other apps rounding out the ranking include Pandora, iTunes, Cooliris and Yahoo! Messenger.

In addition to owning the top app audience ranking, Facebook has consistently ranked #1 in terms of mobile app engagement. Their app currently accounts for 23% of time spent on apps, while sister app Instagram owns another 3% of the market. Various Google apps combine to account for 10% of time spent, with Gmail owning the highest individual share at 3%. These two leading web companies combine for more than 1 out of every 3 minutes spent on mobile apps.

2013 will present an interesting dynamic as Google and Facebook wrestle for app supremacy, while other media properties look to carve out a niche or establish a more prominent position. Will Twitter, Amazon or eBay find their way into the top 10 apps this year? Will engagement on the Netflix app skyrocket as people become more comfortable viewing video on their phones? What will be the next Instagram to come out of nowhere to build an audience of tens of millions in a few short months?

If there is one thing we can all bet on, it’s that the market will look very different a year from now. And may the best apps win.

The Top Ten Burning Issues in Digital

webmaster@comscore.com (Ferry Gijzel) — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 13:35:00 +0000

To kick off the meeting I reviewed what I consider to be the top ten “burning issues” in digital, based on what we at comScore have observed while providing data and analytics to more than 2,000 companies around the world. I thought they would be of interest to readers of the comScore blog. These issues will also form the basis of my comments at the New Media Expo on Tuesday January 8.

Here are my top ten burning issues in digital:

Big Data
e-Commerce
Social Media
Shift of Ad Spending to Digital
Audience Targeting vs. Media Location
Measuring Digital Media Campaigns
Growth of Smartphones & Tablets
Multi-Platform Media Planning & Analysis
Real-Time Marketing Insights
Privacy

In this post, I’ll examine these issues in detail and provide some perspective on the pros and cons surrounding each in order to help marketers better understand the rapid changes being driven by digital. This knowledge is so important in today’s Brave New Digital World because the Internet forces “change without mercy.” I like to say: “The Internet giveth but it also taketh away.”

1. Big Data

“Big data” is a moniker for the explosion in data that has occurred as a result of dramatic increases in computing power coupled with sharp drops in the cost of both computing and data storage. These trends have resulted in a literal torrent of data as consumers go about their daily lives using and interacting with computers in a wide variety of ways.

Here are just a few astounding statistics regarding the growth of big data:

Today’s smartphone would have been the most powerful computer in the world in 1985
120 million people in the U.S. now own smartphones, up 30 million in just the past year
For $600 you can buy a disk that can store all of the world’s music
30+ billion pieces of data are added to Facebook every month
72 hours of video are added to YouTube every minute
By the end of 2012, comScore was capturing 1.4 trillion digital interactions per month
92% of the world’s data was created in just the past two years

In a seminal white paper, the consulting firm, McKinsey, described big data as the next frontier for innovation, competition and productivity. For example, McKinsey estimates that retailers could realize a 60% increase in their operating margins through the smart use of big data.

I’m convinced that big data can provide companies and governments with a basis for operating much more efficiently and effectively. But, as always in life, there’s a catch. Today, we don’t have anywhere near enough human talent to harness and exploit the promise of big data. McKinsey points out that in the U.S. alone we need somewhere north of 140,000 people to fill deep analytical talent positions and 1.5 million more data-savvy managers and analysts to analyze big data and make decisions based on their findings.

2. e-Commerce

Driven by lower prices, convenience and the broadest selection of products, online consumer spending is soaring. comScore data show that in the last twelve months $304 billion was spent via e-commerce in the U.S., with Travel accounting for $110 billion and Non-Travel (aka Retail e-Commerce) pulling in $194 billion. Retail e-Commerce now accounts for one in every ten discretionary dollars spent by U.S. consumers and in Q4 grew 15% versus the prior year, a rate about five times faster than for all consumer spending at retail.

Pure play online retailers such as Amazon and eBay have built massive businesses on the basis of e-commerce. Amazon for example, now attracts in excess of 110 million unique visitors in a month and reported North America sales of $7.9 billion in Q3, up 33% over the prior year. But the emergence of e-commerce also means that the physical store is under attack, which in turn means that those retailers who cannot maintain their in-store market share as their category shifts online face increasingly difficult times. Different product categories are shifting online at differing rates, creating particular challenges for multi-category retailers such as big store mass merchandisers. For example, the consumer electronics product category now sees about 30% of sales completed online while consumer packaged goods lags with no more than 1% of sales occurring via e-commerce. This means it’s particularly important for multi-channel retailers to monitor trends in their market share by channel and also by product category so as to clearly understand the nature of competitive online threats.

The channel shift to online has also put downward pressure on prices, because the Internet allows consumers to easily root out the lowest price for a product. This creates myriad challenges for retailers and manufacturers since pricing power is now in the hands of the consumer.

3. Social Media

comScore data show that social media has just eclipsed portals in share of time spent on the Internet. In November Facebook attracted 150 million unique visitors in the U.S. alone while accounting for 10% of total minutes spent online. But it’s not just Facebook that comprises social: In the same month in the U.S., LinkedIn attracted 41 million monthly unique visitors, Twitter saw 40 million, Google+ attracted 29 million, while Pinterest and Instagram each received more than 25 million visitors.

With the explosion in consumers’ use of social networks, marketers are wrestling with the challenge of how to best utilize these channels to communicate with consumers. In many cases, social holds the promise of word of mouth persuasion achieved at scale. But many questions abound. For example: what’s the value of a fan? what’s the role of paid versus earned media? How to best measure the ROI from social? It’s clear that much research and experimentation is being conducted to help answer these types of questions.

comScore has introduced a service called “Social Essentials” to help quantify the impact of social marketing efforts according to the demographic and behavioral composition of a brand’s social media audience, while also providing the reach and frequency of social brand impressions. These metrics allow marketers to tie social media exposure to desired consumer behaviors, including brand engagement and buying, and to measure actual campaign performance.

Beyond the use of social networks as an advertising platform, market researchers are pondering their use as a source of consumer insights, with some suggesting that this will replace the use of consumer surveys within the next five years. Count me as one of the skeptics when it comes to the ability of “listening” to fully replace “question and answer.” While I certainly appreciate the ability of social to provide timely and valuable information regarding consumer preferences, it seems to me that the need to obtain consumers’ answers to specific questions that might not be present in social media conversations means that surveys will always have an important role to play in consumer research.

4. Shift of Ad Spending to Digital

Advertising spending has been shifting to the Internet at a rapid rate, with the IAB reporting that online advertising in Q3 increased by 18% over last year. For the first three quarters of 2012, the increase was 15% -- far greater than the increase of 3.8% in spending for all measured media during the same time period.

Here are the most recent IAB data by ad format for Q2, 2012:

The IAB report reveals strong growth in a variety of formats, especially mobile (+92%), video (+18%), search (+17%) and banners (+12%). The notable exception is rich media, which posted a large decline of -34%. It has been hypothesized that the high production cost of rich media ads is causing a shift to other formats, especially video where a 30-second TV commercial can be easily repurposed into a 15-second online ad at a minimal cost. At the same time, concern is growing among advertisers and their agencies regarding the limited amount of video inventory available, with many reporting that video CPMs often exceed those of TV. However, it’s also clear that the more precise targeting that can be achieved with online ads along with a higher consumer engagement with video ads is also helping drive video ad prices above those of TV.

5. Audience Targeting vs. Media Location

The rise in computerized cookie-based audience buying has been aided by the availability of demand side platforms and real time exchanges. It’s now estimated that about 20% of all display ad impressions are bought via real time bidding and that this level is growing rapidly. The benefits of programmatic audience buying have been well documented. For example, in this video, Bob Arnold, Associate Director of Global Digital Strategy at Kellogg’s discusses the “lower, lower and lower” effective CPMs that Kellogg’s has been able to achieve through programmatic buying of display ads.

On the negative side, publishers are understandably concerned about the downward pressure on ad prices that has occurred despite their efforts to hold back premium content from the exchanges. This has, in turn, led to the creation of private sell-side platforms, which allow the programmatic buying of audiences on specific internet properties. The hope is that this will protect publishers’ premium pricing, while simultaneously providing advertisers with some of the efficiencies of programmatic buying and the higher impact of having their ads running alongside premium content.

6. Measuring Delivery and Effectiveness of Digital Media Plans

Just over a year ago, the 3MS (“Making Measurement Make Sense”) initiative was launched by three key trade groups: the IAB, which represents online publishers; the ANA, which represents advertisers; and the 4A’s, the agency body. One of the key tenets of 3MS was moving digital measurement from a “served” ad impression to a “viewable” standard.

Here at comScore, we’ve conducted numerous studies around the globe measuring the degree to which digital ad impressions are viewable and the results clearly show that there is much room for improvement. In studies involving billions of impressions from dozens of leading advertisers such as General Mills, P&G, Ford and Allstate, we have found that on average about 30% of display ads are never visible to the end user, generally because the user doesn’t scroll down the page far enough or leaves the page before the ad is fully rendered. Obviously, a non-viewable has no possibility of affecting behavior. As a result, some publishers are now beginning to guarantee the viewability of their inventory, much to the delight of their advertiser clients. This undoubtedly helps make digital advertising more directly comparable to TV advertising and should help in the formulation of more powerful multi-platform advertising campaigns. It will be most interesting to see the rate at which guaranteed viewable impressions become an industry standard.

An important issue that needs to be mentioned at this point is the relative accuracy of cookie-based targeting. comScore’s research has shown that while it’s generally superior to what can be achieved using traditional media, it often fails to match the hype. Because of cookie deletion and the fact that a cookie is a unique browser identifier (but not a person identifier), a cookie can often fail to accurately reflect the demographic and behavioral characteristics of the person using the computer at any given point in time. Here’s what comScore has found:

Targeting accuracy using cookies (% of impressions delivered accurately):
- 70% for 1 demo (e.g. women)
- 48% for 2 demos (e.g. women age 18-34)
- 11% for 3 demos (e.g. women age 18-34 with kids)
- 36% for behavioral targeting

On a related topic, digital media is seeing a growing use of online GRPs to plan and measure the delivery of digital campaigns. When coupled with a viewability measure and a targeting accuracy metric, this can provide a huge step forward in ensuring that an advertiser’s media plan is being delivered as intended. An indication of the growing use of these metrics is that comScore’s Campaign Essentials product suite has now been used in more than 5,000 studies by 160 advertisers / agencies across 32 countries, and its use is accelerating rapidly. The value is also clear, with Kellogg’s reporting a 5X to 6X increase in financial ROI from their digital campaigns since they began using comScore’s service.

Turning to the measurement of the impact of digital campaigns, there are now a variety of ways in which the attitudinal or behavioral impact of online campaigns can be measured – including the ability to do this while the campaign is still running (which allows for in-flight adjustments). Given the availability of these measurement options, it is especially frustrating to see click-through rates (CTR) still being utilized as an effectiveness metric, even though CTRs average no more than 0.1% (yes, that’s 1 in 1000 ads in a campaign being clicked) and despite the fact that research has shown no relationship between CTR and campaign effectiveness. A recent comScore survey found that fully one third of advertisers, agencies and publishers routinely use CTR as a performance metric. The reasons are simple: CTR is fast, inexpensive and easy to compute … but unfortunately it’s also a fundamentally misleading measure of digital advertising effectiveness.

7. Growth of Smartphones and Tablets

The rate of growth in the use of smartphones and tablets has been astounding. More than 120 million people in the U.S. now own a smartphone, accounting for more than 50% of all mobile phone users and representing an increase of 30 million over the past year. More than 48 million people own a tablet, representing a staggering growth of 300% from last year. The tablet is, in fact, the fastest growing electronic device ever created.

The emergence of smartphones and tablets represents a fundamental dislocation in how consumers access the Internet, with these devices now accounting for 13% of all Internet page views and growing at an accelerating rate. To help provide the advertising industry with relevant information measuring how consumers are accessing the Internet using various platforms, comScore recently announced the beta availability of Media Metrix® Multi-Platform, providing a unified view of web, smartphone and tablet audiences.

Mobile and portable technologies are radically altering the manner in which consumers make buying decisions and how they complete transactions. This presents opportunities but also challenges. On the opportunity side, marketers can “push” information to consumers with relevant geographically-targeted messages (e.g. delivering a brand promotion when a consumer is in a local store). Or they can deliver ads when the consumer accesses a mobile web site, although this does require building mobile-enabled web sites, something that many marketers have yet to do. Apps represent yet another way of reaching the consumer with mobile advertising or promotion messages, and here comScore data show that pure play online retailers are far ahead of their multi-channel competitors in the degree to which consumers are using the retailer’s specific app as they shop and buy.

According to the IAB, mobile “push” marketing now accounts for about 8% of all digital advertising, while growing at a rapid 92% rate. This growth is occurring despite low CPMs / CPCs and some consumer resistance to the intrusion of mobile ads.

As with all technological dislocations, there are challenges for manufacturers and retailers that accompany consumers’ adoption of mobile technology. For retailers the downside is “showrooming,” the phenomenon of consumers visiting a physical store to research (e.g. to “touch and feel”) products but then using their smartphone or tablet in-store to price comparison shop -- often resulting in them buying the product online. comScore data show that consumers have increased their use of smartphones to access retail-related information by 50% in the past year alone. Retailers are using a variety of tactics to try to combat showrooming, including selling unique products that can’t be found elsewhere or offering to match the lowest price that the consumer finds online. Whatever retailers’ response might be, it’s apparent that the practice of showrooming is creating more downward pressure on prices.

comScore data show that about 13% of all e-commerce transactions over the holiday shopping season were completed using a mobile or portable device, with tablets accounting for about 70% of that total. Overall, M-commerce is now growing at a rate of about 30% per year. That’s good news for the consumer while presenting both challenges and opportunities for manufacturers and retailers.

8. Multi-Platform Media Planning and Analysis

Consumer consumption of media content is fragmenting across digital platforms at an accelerating rate. For example, originally-scripted TV content can now be viewed on the Internet using a PC or Mac -- and increasingly via mobile and portable devices; TV ads are being delivered online; and sports programming is being viewed live on smartphones. While this multi-platform behavior allows advertisers more opportunities to reach consumers with their advertising messages at a place and time that the consumer prefers, it also creates a pressing need for media planners to accurately measure how content is being consumed across platforms.

To help understand this multi-platform behavior, comScore recently conducted a seminal study for NBC that measured how consumers viewed programming from the 2012 London Olympics. Dubbed the “Billion Dollar Research Lab”, the study involved measuring how 700 consumers used TV, the fixed Internet, smartphones and tablets to view the Olympics. In a compressed 17-day period, a massive amount of Olympic sports content is consumed across platforms. Since sports is the content category most viewed across platforms it was believed that by measuring this behavior we would be able to open a window to see into the future of multiplatform consumption and better understand how it might evolve across all types of content.

Some of the key insights from the study are shown below:

From my perspective, one of the most intriguing findings was that alternative screens are additive. In other words, there was no evidence that incremental screens cannibalize the use of other screens. Media consumption is apparently not a zero sum game. Consumption increases across all screens as more screens are used. This is illustrated vividly below:

The study also confirmed the importance of the concurrent use of other digital screens while watching TV. Specifically, 25% of the time spent watching the Olympics on TV was accompanied by the use of another screen. Interestingly, there was no evidence that these simultaneous viewers skewed younger, since 55% of them were 55 years of age or older.

Given the current and growing importance of multi-platform consumption, it’s critical that new systems be developed that can provide media planners and analysts with the ability to measure duplicated and unduplicated audiences across platforms at the most granular level, e.g. at the level of an individual show. comScore is currently building such a system for ESPN in partnership with Arbitron. In addition, comScore’s Andrew Lipsman did an excellent job of covering the measurement challenges and solutions for digital media fragmentation in a recent white paper: “Brave New Digital World.”

9. Real-Time Marketing Insights

Increasingly today, speed of decision-making is a competitive advantage -- and this is certainly true in the case of digital advertising. Gone are the days when an advertiser could wait until a campaign had run its course to understand if the media plan was delivered as intended or to measure the effectiveness and ROI of the campaign. Today’s digital realities demand – and allow – real-time insights so that course corrections can be implemented quickly as needed, thereby significantly reducing waste and increasing campaign effectiveness. Smart advertisers and their agencies are already receiving near real-time comScore data summarizing the delivery of their digital media plans and their impact -- on a publisher-by-publisher basis. This allows for in-flight adjustments as necessary. It’s encouraging to see this foster the development of strong but flexible partnerships between publishers and advertisers that are tightly focused on the advertiser’s advertising objectives in terms of reach, frequency and targeting. The Kellogg Company has graciously allowed us to cite some powerful examples of their use of near real-time feedback data in a case study that can be downloaded here.

While there are many benefits from the use of real-time insights to gauge advertising effectiveness, it’s also important to point out one potential downside that’s especially relevant to brand marketing. This relates to the specific content in the advertising message. The use of price and promotion incentives will undoubtedly generate a more immediate consumer response than will a branding message. As a result, it’s possible that real time measurement could tend to favor price as a preferred driver of consumer choice, with the unintended consequence of creating a long term decline in brand loyalty. Marketers will be well advised to carefully consider the creative that they employ in their advertising campaigns when using real-time measurements.

10. Privacy Considerations

The advent of digital marketing has been accompanied by a far higher level of scrutiny of privacy issues than was ever the case with traditional media. Some of that is to be expected. Data are, after all, at the center of the digital world and it’s critical that consumers’ personally-identifiable (PI) data be protected. Much of the privacy concern that digital marketing has encountered relates to the observation of consumer behavior and the targeting of ads based on this behavior. Ironically, the myriad new digital ad targeting approaches that dramatically increase the relevance and effectiveness of the advertising being delivered -- all while simultaneously reducing waste -- require no PI data about the consumer. Anonymous cookies are the basis of this matching up of advertising with behavior.

The industry as a whole has the opportunity to help legislative bodies here in the U.S., and especially in Europe, understand how both first and third party cookies, when used anonymously, present no risk to privacy.The IAB has been particularly active in this regard, both through their lobbying efforts and by publishing reports that quantify the economic value to the U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the ad-supported Internet ecosystem. The IAB’s latest report, published in September 2012, estimated that the contribution of the Internet ecosystem to the $14.5 trillion U.S. GDP was $741 billion in 2011. The report further concludes that the value of the Internet ecosystem sector grew by 56% from 2007 to 2011, while U.S. GDP, partly as a consequence of the 2008/9 recession, grew by only 5%. Clearly, online marketing has become a major contributor to the U.S. economy and it is to be hoped that legislators will see the need to keep this engine of growth running without undue interruption.

So, there you have my assessment of the top ten burning issues in digital marketing. As you can see, ours is a dynamic industry, driven by dramatic increases in computing power that allow for continuous and rapid innovation. But, as history has shown, in every technology-driven dislocation there are losers as well as winners. For any business today, it’s clear that ignoring or resisting the changes wrought by digital technology will surely lead to disaster because as Rishad Tobaccowala, Chief Strategy Officer at Vivaki, put it: “Digital is like hydrochloric acid, it burns through everything.” Successful marketers in contrast will ensure that they adapt to the new digital realities and improve their businesses by leveraging the many innovations that technology has provided.

Green Monday Gains

webmaster@comscore.com (Ferry Gijzel) — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 15:08:00 +0000

To follow comScore’s ongoing coverage of the 2012 holiday season e-commerce spending trends, follow www.comscore.com/HolidayShopping.

This infographic was created by Stephanie Nguyen, Client Service Analyst, Financial Services.

Welcome to a Brave New Digital World

webmaster@comscore.com (Ferry Gijzel) — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 15:00:00 +0000

This new paradigm offers consumers a seamless digital experience that can easily traverse platforms, locations and temporal constraints so that content can be experienced anytime and anyplace. And as the average consumer’s screen time expands to fill in many of these available gaps throughout the day, there are more opportunities than ever before for marketers to reach and engage with their customers. But, if this brave new digital world is one so rich with opportunity, why are so many marketers greeting it with anxiety and despair?

For many, change is often uncomfortable and can be disruptive to established practices. In order for businesses to navigate change effectively and emerge not only unscathed but also better positioned for the future, they must embrace the key trends affecting the consumer landscape, understand the opportunities, and overcome the challenges that stand in their path. comScore intends to assist on each of these fronts and help digital businesses ease their transition into this new paradigm.

Today, comScore released its newest white paper Brave New Digital World: A Manifesto for the Future of Digital Measurement & Analytics to show a new way forward.The paper highlights 10 principles that will guide comScore’s approach to measuring the media now and into the future.

The Imminent Mobile Commerce Avalanche

webmaster@comscore.com (Ferry Gijzel) — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 23:33:00 +0000

Due to a past felony I must have committed during my early life, my karmic payback was having to go out shopping on Black Friday this year. After almost committing seppuku, I accepted my fate and hunkered down for a day of hip checks and raised blood pressure. As annoying as the crowds were, my experience (and savings) was positively impacted by a trusty sidekick: my smartphone.

Smartphone & Tablet Adoption Still Haven’t Peaked

Walking around a big city it would seem that everyone has a smartphone. The familiar image of someone typing with both hands in front of them immediately denotes a smartphone user, but believe it or not, not everyone in the U.S. is walking around with an iPhone in their hand.

According to our latest figures, only 53% of all cell phone owners in the U.S. have smartphones as their primary device. With 234 Million total cell phone owners in the U.S. (age 13+), comScore MobiLens® shows that over 110 Million cell phone users that have yet to migrate over from their feature phones. Well over 50% of new handset purchases are smartphones, which means that market penetration will continue to ascend for the foreseeable future.

Tablets saw a meteoric rise these past three years, reaching 40 Million units in the United States seemingly overnight while it took smartphones about nine years to reach a similar level. With all of the options available, adoption will continue at breakneck speed, but as noted above, there is still a long way to go before we hit saturation.

While both devices are driving this huge shift in consumption towards mobile, we should also acknowledge that as different devices, they assume a very different role in the digital shopping experience. Specifically, smartphones disrupt the traditional brick-and-mortar purchase process but don’t necessarily result in direct conversion, while tablets are more often used at home – often in the evening hours – and result in more transactions.

Mobile Purchase May Be Ready to Accelerate

There’s no doubt that people love the convenience, comfort and attractive pricing that digital commerce affords. But their mobile purchasing activity hasn’t yet caught up to their overall usage of these new media. In fact, it’s only begun to represent a meaningful percentage of total e-commerce activity in the past two years.

According to comScore e-commerce research, 10% of online retail dollars spent in Q3 2012 were on mobile devices. We anticipate this share to increase to an even more substantial 12-13% during Q4 2012. Tablets are the driving force behind this transaction share explosion, as the ease of use and shopping experience on a tablet device lends itself rather well to actual purchase behavior and more closely approximates the desktop buying experience than smartphones. In fact, the mobile spending trend acceleration appears to coincide with the more mainstream adoption of tablets in 2011.

As rapid device adoption continues, not only are more consumers entering the m-commerce market, but those who may have first entered a year or two ago are integrating more advanced behaviors into their mobile repertoire. Last year’s first-time smartphone owner is this year’s first-time showroomer and maybe next year’s first-time dabbler in tablet commerce. Continued technology and marketing investment are creating a mobile shopping environment that is increasingly easy to use and highly functional, enabling the consumer to learn and adopt these new behaviors more quickly.

Device adoption is a snowball picking up size and speed, but the tipping point will be when the average mobile consumer is comfortable shopping, showrooming and purchasing over their smartphones and tablets. Retailers must now prepare for the coming avalanche…or risk getting buried by it.

Cyber Monday By the Numbers

webmaster@comscore.com (Ferry Gijzel) — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 21:08:00 +0000

This infographic was created by Stephanie Nguyen, Client Service Analyst, Financial Services.

Thoughts on the MRC’s Viewable Impression Advisory

webmaster@comscore.com (Ferry Gijzel) — Wed, 28 Nov 2012 18:23:00 +0000

Not all viewability measurement is the same:

3MS performed diagnostics on all five participating vendors as well as conducted a real-world test with 22 ad campaigns.
The analysis found significant variability across vendors with respect to the ability to measure viewability. In the majority of the campaigns, the vendors could not even measure half of the impressions served! Some campaigns couldn’t be accurately measured at all.
This is particularly concerning, given that many vendors are claiming to offer complete viewability measurement – yet the 3MS analysis proved that most can detect and report on viewability of only a fraction of served impressions.
The takeaway: Given the findings from the analysis, the MRC recommends only working with a vendor that has received MRC accreditation for its viewable impression measurement. Earlier this year, comScore became the first vendor to be MRC accredited based on the IAB Guidelines for the Conduct for Ad Verification. The accreditation was for our vCE Ad Validation module.

You must be able to measure in cross-domain iframes:

Cross domain iframes provide serious challenges when it comes to measuring viewability. In our own analyses, we’ve seen that a typical campaign can have 60% or more of total impressions delivered through cross-domain iframes. As MRC and 3MS have both noted, most providers of viewability measurement cannot determine viewability for placements in cross-domain iframes.
The 3MS analysis is consistent with comScore findings, and provides objective and consensus third-party validation of the extent to which cross-domain iframes pose challenges for campaign measurement. While the cross-domain iframe measurement is certainly not the only issue in viewability tracking, it is the most significant one.
The 3MS study also found for ad nets in particular, cross-domain iframes made up 78% of the ads served.
The takeaway: comScore is the only vendor accredited for its measurement of a significant number of cross-domain iframes. For more information on this topic and our approach, please read a blog post from comScore CRO Josh Chasin.

Transparency and disclosure are of paramount importance:

The MRC has indicated to us that viewability providers should report on three specific statistics: the number of impressions that are known to be viewable; the number of impressions that are known to be not viewable; and the number of impressions for which viewability is unknown. Further, measurement companies should provide detail with respect to precise handling of, and assumptions made about, those impressions for which viewability is unknown.
The takeaway: comScore provides the transparency and disclosure that MRC requires with respect to viewability reporting. Users of viewability measurement should demand a similar level of accountability from their measurement provider.

A number of advertisers and agencies are currently using vCE Validation to evaluate and even bill their publisher partners based on the viewability performance of the impressions for which they have contracted. Several publishers are already selling impressions based on comScore’s viewable impressions measurement. Even more will be doing so next year.

Choosing an accredited vendor who can measure cross-domain iframes and provide fully transparent accounting of measurability is the key to moving forward with viewable impressions. As you prepare for the year ahead, I encourage you to keep the above context in mind.

As always, I am happy to answer any questions you may have and would welcome the opportunity to discuss with you the best ways to incorporate vCE into your plans for 2013. Feel free to reach out to me at press@comscore.com or via your comScore representative.

Looking Ahead to Key Online Spending Days for the 2012 Holiday Season

webmaster@comscore.com (Ferry Gijzel) — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 14:00:00 +0000

Cyber Monday is of course the centerpiece of the online holiday season, but several other days are important – with a few becoming increasingly so. Perhaps one of the more interesting trends is the emergence of Thanksgiving Day as a day of shopping activity, both online and offline. While it still sees significantly lighter spending than other days ($479 million for Thanksgiving Day in 2011 vs. $1.25 billion for Cyber Monday), it is growing at a lightning clip. In fact, over the past five years, online spending on Thanksgiving Day has surged 128%, about 2.5x the rate of online holiday spending in total (+51%). Thanksgiving’s 5-year growth rate even surpasses Cyber Monday’s stellar 106% growth over the same time period. Other important shopping days like Black Friday (+88%) and Green Monday (+71%) are also significantly outpacing the average.

While Thanksgiving Day is becoming a more important shopping event, it pales in comparison to the significance of Cyber Monday. In 2005, when Cyber Monday first earned its moniker, spending on that day reached $484 million – about what Thanksgiving Day had last year. By 2011, it had reached an impressive total of $1.25 billion in spending and it remains the heaviest online spending day in history. Today it reigns as clearly the most important online day for retailers – one during which they can expect to generate considerable online sales but also gain all-important mindshare among consumers as they ramp up their spending over the weeks prior to Christmas.

Interestingly, when the term “Cyber Monday” was first coined by Shop.org (retailers’ online trade body), it was often erroneously thought to be the heaviest online spending day of the season. In reality, the day signified the first big spike in spending, but it was often bested by several other days in December. From 2005-2007, Cyber Monday ranked between 8th and 12th among all spending days by the time the season had concluded.

However, its status changed in a significant way during the midst of the 2008 financial crisis. Consumers were fearful of the economy being in a freefall and it seemed that nobody wanted to open up their wallets. So retailers responded by offering very attractive discounts and ramping up promotional activity around Cyber Monday. As a result, the day became much more important to the season as a whole and finished the year as the 3rd heaviest spending day. A similar trend continued in 2009 when it ranked 2nd, and then it finally emerged to take the crown as the heaviest day of the season in 2010 – a feat it repeated in 2011.

What is comScore expecting for 2012? It appears likely that the trend of the past few years will hold and that Cyber Monday will once again rank atop the list. In terms of dollar expectations, there is a good chance we’ll see spending surpass $1.5 billion on that day.

Undoubtedly, most online retailers out there already have their deals ready to ensure they’re firmly in consumers’ consideration set this year. Consumers are showing renewed signs of optimism heading into this year’s shopping season and it’s never too early for online retailers to win a fair share of their spending.

How the “Digital Endcap” Can Help Improve Online Retailers’ Bottom Lines

webmaster@comscore.com (Ferry Gijzel) — Mon, 12 Nov 2012 13:35:00 +0000

Holiday retail season is upon us and once again billions of dollars will be spent on advertising to drive sales and profit during the most important time of year. Based on Q3 e-commerce sales estimates, it looks like 2012 will have a strong close. One of the most competitive business sectors on the planet, the delicate balancing act between margin and sales volume during the holiday race can make or break even the best of retailers. As a result, the pressure is on to spend, but spend wisely, to ensure that profits are maximized.

Success in online holiday retail requires the efficient use of digital advertising, which has evolved considerably in the retail sector over the years. Today there are a variety of advertising tactics being deployed, each of which affects different parts of the marketing funnel. At the two extremes of the funnel are traditional display advertising, which is great at building awareness but rarely directly converts viewers into buyers, and paid search advertising, which is highly effective at the bottom of the funnel at helping drive conversion among consumers with a buying intent.

Where the online advertising market for retail has evolved more recently is in the middle of the marketing funnel. One of the most prevalent trends of late is the use of re-targeting, which leverages cookies to target display ads to consumers based on their previous online shopping and/or searching experience. These ads can be thought of as much lower down the marketing funnel than traditional display ads because they are reaching people with previously indicated intent.

This year we are seeing the emergence of another form of display ad that resides further down the funnel, which we are calling the “Digital Endcap,” which refers to a display ad for a manufacturer appearing on a retailer’s website. The example below shows an ad for Kraft Foods appearing on the Walmart.com website.

The term “Digital Endcap” is derived from endcaps, those compelling displays you find at the end of aisles to help promote a particular product, in traditional retail stores. Since the customer has already demonstrated purchase intent by walking into the store, these endcaps can prove to be valuable marketing expenditures by drawing a ready-to-buy customer to your brand.

The value creation opportunity here is apparent. The retailer is able to further monetize the traffic it’s already generating, at virtually zero marginal cost, by providing ad inventory. Even if these ads are monetized at the rate of a traditional display ad, it’s a potentially valuable profit stream for retailers. But there is a strong argument that these ads should be monetized at an even higher rate because they are reaching consumers further down the purchase funnel.

Retailers are getting wise to these advertising opportunities and we can expect to see them venture into this territory with greater enthusiasm. Amazon recently made a big splash during Advertising Week, sending a signal that it intends to become a major player in this market. With 100 million visitors a month and the richest data on consumer purchase behavior of anyone on the web, who can blame them? It will not be surprising to see other major retailers follow suit.

In fact, Amazon and Walmart are not the only ones getting into the Digital Endcap game today. According to comScore Ad Metrix, more than 8.6 billion display ad impressions appeared on retailer websites in September 2012, an increase of 10% in the past year, with the two market leaders accounting for less than half of the total.

Making money in retail can be challenging, but retailers are a savvy bunch that have virtually perfected the science of how to get consumers to open up their wallets. But however skilled they are at their existing trade, there are always new monetization opportunities, and they are wisely turning to the Digital Endcap as an avenue for growth. Brick-and-mortar endcaps have proven effective in the offline world, and there is no reason that the same approach won’t work in e-commerce as well.

4 Key Storylines for the 2012 Online Holiday Shopping Season

webmaster@comscore.com (Gail Ballantyne) — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 16:26:00 +0000

Over the past several years, each holiday season has seen the continuation of many online shopping trends that are not necessarily new but nevertheless shape the dynamics of the season. The holiday shopping period continues to kick off earlier and earlier, Cyber Monday rises in prominence and promotional activity, and free shipping becomes an increasingly essential requirement for online purchase. We expect to see these trends continue in 2012 and reach new heights, as they have in each of the previous few years.

But while some trends are merely evolutionary to the online holiday shopping season, there are other trends we expect to be revolutionary. Though these trends may have existed during last year’s season, we see that the market conditions have changed such that we anticipate a step-change in their impact on the 2012 season dynamics. The four key trends we’ve identified for this year, which we'll discuss during State of Online Retail Q3, are referred to as the 4 S’s: Social Commerce, Smartphones, Showrooming, and Sit-Back Shopping.

1. Social Commerce

Social Commerce is far from being a new phrase in the e-commerce lexicon, but we see the potential for it taking hold in a way that it frankly hasn’t up until now. The notion that product and gift recommendations would fly freely around Facebook and Twitter, causing friends to latch onto these digital word-of-mouth events and make purchases, was probably overstated from the outset. While these events certainly do occur, they just don’t happen at the scale that was originally anticipated. But that doesn’t mean social commerce has been a flop – it really just needed to find the right sweet spot. And it seems we are getting closer to that point…

The reason 2012 will be different for social commerce is the rapid emergence of social media channels more oriented to the shopping experience – most notably Pinterest, but also sites like The Fancy and Svpply. Pinterest had just 3 million U.S. visitors a month heading into the 2011 holiday season, but this year boasts more than 25 million. With so many people pinning the best retail eye-candy out there for their friends to explore, we expect to see Pinterest become a significant driver of online gift idea exploration. Sites like The Fancy and Svpply feature similar eye-candy and have also integrated buying directly into the experience, in addition to enabling users to either “want” or “fancy” the items they covet.

Facebook, which really drives the social sector, is also reportedly testing a “want” button, which could really give a boost to social commerce if it gets rolled out in time for the season. In addition to its recent integration of Karma, the social gifting app acquired earlier in the year, Facebook seems well poised for the impending social commerce wave.

2. Smartphones

Smartphones aren’t exactly new, but they have entered the mainstream market in a big way over the past year, with 30 million more devices used today than at this point a year ago. The U.S. mobile market recently reached 50% smartphone penetration and for consumers that have not already jumped into the smartphone market it is likely only a matter of time. There is greater affordability of smartphones at the lower end of the market (with many devices being offered for free with the purchase of a cell phone contract) and amped up interest at the upper end of the market, which should help propel it to even new heights. What’s truly different about this year than previous years is that the vast majority of consumers now find themselves in-market for a smartphone, whether they’re a first-time buyer or just ready to upgrade to the latest and greatest.

At the upper end, devices like the iPhone 5 and Samsung Galaxy S3 have been an immediate hit and are flying off the shelves. Incredibly, comScore observed that the iPhone 5 generated as many online sales in its first 3 days as the iPhone 4S did in its first month! But it’s not just the ferocity with which the latest and greatest devices are finding their way into consumers’ hands, it’s that it has also spawned its own accessories echo boom. Whether you’re in the market for phone cases, connecting cords, speakers, or digital content downloads, there are a variety of available gifts and stocking stuffers at most price points that make for popular gifts. We can expect to see that smartphones and related accessories will drive a significant percentage of holiday gift-giving this year.

3. Showrooming

With more smartphones in the hands of consumers, behaviors like ‘showrooming’ – examining merchandise in-store and then purchasing online – will continue to increase at the expense of traditional brick-and-mortar retail. Interestingly, Americans by and large still don’t even know what the term ‘showrooming’ means… but they sure have learned the behavior. In our recent e-commerce survey, we asked consumers about their familiarity with the term and only 16% said they had heard of it. When we prompted them with the definition, however, fully 37% said they had engaged in the behavior.

The driver is not just that smartphone penetration is has reached 50%, but that newer smartphone owners have now learned to integrate these behaviors into their everyday experiences. Price-checking via smartphone is now a way of life for many in-store shoppers, and they are particularly savvy to its utility in certain product categories such as Consumer Electronics.

At the same time, brick-and-mortar retailers are fighting back with new strategies aimed at combating the showrooming phenomenon. Best Buy recently announced it would match competitors’ online pricing. Toys R’ Us said that it would focus on offering in-store product exclusives, ostensibly to bring customers into the store and combat the ability for showrooming to occur. While these strategies may come at some cost to margins, they should slow the loss of market share to online.

4. Sit-Back Shopping

Another major media shift in the last 12 months is that tablets have evolved from being high-priced luxury goods to mainstream devices with the introduction of several more affordable tablets, led by the $199 Amazon Kindle Fire, during the 2011 holiday season. With tablets now in the hands of more than 40 million Americans, new behaviors are beginning to emerge in terms of how and when people access content.

Many of these new consumption occasions are incremental to existing media usage, particularly during travel and in the evenings at home, whether curled up on the couch or in bed. Shopping, interestingly, is one of the most popular activities on tablets, with Apparel & Accessories shopping performing particularly well in this environment. Perhaps the fact that tablet usage tends to occur when people are in a more relaxed state of mind leads to more online shopping, which is why we see this emerging behavior of Sit-Back Shopping representing a potential boon to retailers this season.

Winners & Losers for Holiday 2012?

The net effect of these four key trends for the 2012 holiday season is that as these new dynamics take hold we will see different winners and losers emerge. The shift to mobile devices, and particularly the reliance on apps, favors the large and established online retail brands like Amazon, eBay and Walmart. And of course we cannot forget Apple, with not only the hottest smartphone in the market with the iPhone 5, but also the popular iPad and promising new iPad Mini. These and other tablets may also provide a relative boost to product categories that perform well on that medium, such as Apparel & Accessories and Digital Content & Downloads (and specifically e-books).

Meanwhile, those facing the greatest headwinds will continue to be traditional brick-and-mortar retailers in the face of competitive pressure from e-commerce (assuming they are not keeping pace with the platform shift). However, they finally appear poised to defend their turf and are becoming more creative with their strategies.

But we should also remember that the holiday season isn’t just zero-sum game for the retail sector. While it will always be a very competitive arena, the wind just may be at the industry’s back this season with a slowly improving job market and consumer confidence on the rise.

Let’s hope this ends up being a Merry Christmas season for all.

Marketing to Moms Online: Campaign Norms Reveals Both Targeting Efficiency and Potential for Improvement

webmaster@comscore.com (Wesley Jonker) — Mon, 29 Oct 2012 16:31:00 +0000

Since the introduction of comScore’s validated Campaign Essentials™ in 2012, these types of questions continue to be at the forefront of our clients’ minds. They want to know what is “normal” when it comes to targeting a segment like Moms so they can understand whether or not their media plan is delivering on its promise. As is true with so many aspects of digital advertising, the answer to this question isn’t always simple, and what’s “normal” often depends on the campaign goals and how broadly or narrowly defined is the target audience.

What is Normal? Online Benchmarks for Marketing to Moms

An analysis of 984 campaigns targeting women 25-54 (an often-used approximation for the Moms segment) found that, on average, online campaigns accurately reached this audience with 31% percent of their impressions. For a marketer seeking to reach moms, this may at first seem like a shockingly low percentage. But the good news is that this is actually a reasonably efficient targeting rate and it also leaves room for improvement, signaling an opportunity to get more from your marketing spend.

So how can a 31% hit rate actually be efficient? We can evaluate the campaign in the context of targeting efficiency,which is defined as the percent in-target impressions divided by the percent that the target represents relative to online population. Since the Moms segment represents 25% of the online audience, 31% of impressions being delivered on-target means that the campaigns are, on average, being delivered with greater accuracy than would be the case in the absence of any targeting.

Targeting Performance Women 25-54 Years Old n = 984 campaigns
% of Impressions Delivered In-Target	31%
% of Target Audience in the Online Population	25%
Targeting Efficiency*	1.24

*Defined as the percent of impressions that are in-target divided by the percent of the online population represented by the target.

As you can imagine, the more narrowly you define your target the lower the likelihood your campaign will be delivered against that target. But, your ability to deliver against that target more efficiently is likely to go up. Optimizing on target efficiency provides a way to get maximum reach for a target audience, which is why many of our clients evaluate performance by comparing this metric across various sites and buys while layering in relative costs to calculate ROI.

What About the Other 69% of Impressions?

Understanding the audience composition of the remaining group that fell outside of the target is also a critically important part of campaign evaluation. Building on the above example, we might be interested to learn what percent of those impressions were delivered to Dads or Grandparents who are often primary caretakers for children? These groups frequently play a role in household and family purchasing decisions, and therefore also represent value to marketers.

Every comScore vCE campaign enables clients to see the target efficiency for the primary and secondary audiences to understand how well additional groups beyond the primary target are being reached. In the campaign screenshot below, we can see that while the targeting efficiency for the primary target was well above average at about 1.6, the secondary target also performed well with a targeting efficiency of 1.4.

Demographics Are Important, But So Are Behavioral Attributes

While demographics are often the primary method of targeting a particular audience, marketers can also realize value in evaluating delivery according to behavioral attributes. Behavioral segment reporting is included in every comScore vCE report so we can assess a large number of campaigns to look for patterns, and comScore reports on 80 different behavioral segments.

When looking at campaigns targeted to Moms, we often see a higher behavioral affinity toward consuming parenting content online than the demographic target alone would show. This means that while the normative benchmark for hitting women 25-54 in an online campaign is 31%, a given campaign might show 60% of its ads reached people interested in parenting, cooking or home décor, which are traditionally Mom-focused content sites. Marketers who are trying to sell products or services related to these areas wouldn’t necessarily think they’re wasting impressions if the people seeing the campaign are highly interested in these areas!

Key Takeaways for Campaign Analysis

Advertisers and their agencies can leverage these and other insights from comScore vCE to better evaluate campaign effectiveness and improve their allocation decisions. As a starting point for marketers planning their campaigns, there are three important things to keep in mind:

Understanding the ability of your campaign to hit a target audience is critical to evaluating performance, but doing so based on targeting efficiency rather than by a % in-target metric alone often provides more meaningful and actionable campaign intelligence.
Secondary audiences have value and should not be overlooked as part of campaign planning and analysis.
Evaluating behavioral segments can provide additional insight into how well a campaign is performing against high-potential customers that demographic targets alone cannot provide.

Tectonic Shifts are Shaping the Multi-Platform Digital World

webmaster@comscore.com (Wesley Jonker) — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 12:50:00 +0000

The digital media world, too, was once a lot simpler. Previously consisting of the relative simplicity of the computer-based web, the emergence of new platforms such as smartphones and tablets – in addition to the evolution of TV from analog to digital – has made the media world today much more fragmented, multi-faceted and complex. And this is no longer a theoretical problem; it is one we can observe through the lens of data, just like the Greeks before us. Recent comScore data illustrate just how rapidly the platforms shifts are occurring, with mobile platform consumption accelerating to account for an increasing share of page view activity as the formerly PC-centric view appears smaller and smaller in our rear view mirror.

This trend is not only visually alarming, but it perhaps even understates the case by not accounting for smartphone app usage. Analysis of the top ten web properties online showed that their total smartphone web and app engagement now represents 35% of their total time spent on their properties between the desktop and smartphone platforms. So the transition is not merely underway – it is already here.

These changing platform dynamics are like tectonic shifts that are continually shaping and affecting the evolving formation of the digital world. While many will behold these shifts with fear of the destruction the inevitable earthquakes will create, they would also be wise to consider that without earthquakes the highest mountains would never have been created.

We must think of this new multi-platform world as one ofcreative destruction; but importantly, it is one in which far more is created than is destroyed and which should enable us to reach new heights. In fact, we are now embarking upon what may be the greatest opportunity for value creation the media industry has ever experienced.

Where does this new value come from? For the most part it derives from either (1) recognizing that utilizing multiple channels in conjunction with one another can deliver marketing efficiencies or synergies, or (2) the fact that more platforms drive incremental media consumption that enhance the ability to reach consumers and monetize content.

To address the first issue, last week comScore introduced vCE Multi-Platform, a revolutionary campaign analytics solution that provides holistic validation of ad delivery across TV, web and mobile platforms. This solution helps quantify the total combined advertising reach across platforms and incremental reach of each medium for a given campaign using person-based metrics such as demographics, reach/frequency and GRPs. By understanding these metrics in a combined and unduplicated view of digital consumer behavior, marketers can be more efficient in building reach among particular target segments versus increasing their ad frequency to improve advertising effectiveness.

Improved efficiency and effectiveness are an important part of the equation, but so too is the incremental opportunity afforded by multi-platform dynamics. comScore has spent the past year pursuing several new areas of multi-platform research and analysis that have unlocked new insights into this value driver, how it manifests and how gains for our clients can be realized.

Facebook Multi-Platform Audience Analysis Reveals Significant Incremental Engagement
Perhaps one of the more visible platform shifts being discussed in the digital marketplace today is that of Facebook. By far the #1 web property in the U.S. in terms of engagement on both desktop computers (13% of time spent in the most recent 3 months, according to comScore Media Metrix) and smartphones (16% of time spent, according to comScore Mobile Metrix –18% if you include recent acquisition, Instagram), many have wondered how the popular social network will navigate the shift towards increased usage of mobile media.

To better understand Facebook’s holistic engagement among users, we conducted research to estimate the total average engagement per visitor coming from both web and mobile platforms. The analysis showed that the average U.S. Facebook visitor, (age 18+, accessing across any platform) spent an average of more than 10 hours per month in aggregate across the two channels – nearly 60% higher than engagement on desktops alone.

Incremental visitors and engagement are becoming such important parts of the equation, and yet the standard view of the market today does not adequately account for that. But comScore is on the case as we develop new multi-platform measurement capabilities to address the need for unduplicated multi-platform audience and engagement estimates.

For 2012 Olympics, More Screens = More Overall Viewing
Earlier this year we undertook a ground-breaking effort with NBC to measure the multi-platform viewing behavior of the 2012 London Olympics. Measuring the TV, computer, smartphone and tablet consumption of Olympics enthusiasts, we found something very interesting:more screens = more viewing.

Now, as we saw in the previous example, one might expect that that the availability of additional screens might deliver an increase in total viewing as opposed to it being a zero sum game. That’s precisely what we observed. But what was really interesting is that the more different screens viewers incorporated into their multi-platform Olympic viewing experience, the more time they spent viewing on their primary channels. For example, those who watched the Olympics on four platforms – TV, PC, Smartphone and Tablet – spent by far the most time per day overall viewing the Olympics at 8 hr 29, but they also spent about 50% more time watching on TV than TV-only Olympics viewers (6 hr 07 vs. 4 hr 19).

These findings suggest that platform shifts need not cannibalize from other platforms, and that they can in fact supplement and enhance the value of the primary platform. Platform extension means not just incremental viewing opportunities, but also the possibility of platform complementarities that fuel even higher engagement.

What Does the Multi-Platform Future Hold?
With research insights like these, along with some truly break-through products to help marketers and media companies derive value from their multi-platform strategies, comScore has never been more excited about the future of digital media.

The tectonic platform shifts are inevitable, and they may provide moments of discomfort and uncertainty along the way. But they fundamentally represent an enormous opportunity for marketers to drive sales and for media companies to monetize their content.

Which companies will decide to brave the elements and be first to summit the mountain?

The iPhone Effect: How the iPhone 5 is Making Waves through the Smartphone Market

webmaster@comscore.com (Wesley Jonker) — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 20:28:00 +0000

The Makings of a Perfect Storm: A Rising Tide Lifts All (Smartphone) Boats

comScore data show that more than two million iPhone 5 devices were purchased within the first 24 hours of pre-ordering, with most consumers purchasing directly from the comfort of their own homes. Other eager Apple enthusiasts jockeyed to be among the first in line to get their hands on the latest iPhone, waiting hours – and in some cases, nights – for these devices to hit the shelves at Apple stores on September 21. Unsurprisingly, the device quickly sold out.

As sales for the iPhone 5 skyrocketed in the immediate wake of its launch, a formidable Apple competitor also saw a strong bump in its sales. Samsung experienced a 50 percent increase in average U.S. weekly online orders for the latest iteration of its flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S III, during the week following the iPhone 5 launch. We also saw this momentum manifest itself in the number of Galaxy S III search engine queries, which not only reached a peak during the same week as the iPhone 5 launch but even surpassed the number of search queries during its own launch earlier this summer.

So why did Apple’s competition seemingly receive a boost from the iPhone 5 release? We can hypothesize that all the buzz surrounding the latest iPhone release might have piqued consumer interest about smartphones in general, causing consumers to research other top-selling devices such as the Galaxy S III. But part of the lift we’re seeing for the Galaxy S III might also be due to the well-executed commercial campaign launched by Samsung at around the same time, which positioned directly against the “cult-like” feel of Apple product launches while highlighting the Galaxy’s technological advantages over the iPhone. Another factor that may have also played a role was the backlash to Apple’s decision to cast aside Google Maps in favor of Apple’s new native mapping app.

Rumbling in the Distance: The iPhone Accessory Market

Suppose you were one of the lucky millions who were able to score the iPhone 5. What’s next on the horizon? Unless you’re one of the rare few who prefer to carry around a “naked” iPhone, it’s time to accessorize. You might decide to purchase a new case to make it uniquely yours or get a screen protector to protect every inch of your display. Then, there are car chargers, an extra set of headphones, or even those new EarPods to consider.

And if those were your next purchases, then you aren’t alone. comScore’s recent e-commerce data suggests that in the latter half of September 2012 total iPhone accessory sales surpassed those of October 2011 when the iPhone 4S was launched. In other words, it only took a fraction of the time for iPhone accessory sales following the iPhone 5 to reach the levels that they hit following Apple’s last iPhone launch.

It should be noted that this huge bump in accessory sales likely comes as more than just a result of record-breaking device sales. The iPhone 5 departs from the traditionally smaller iPhone screen size and has new components that require owners to purchase brand new covers, and perhaps more controversially, new peripheral hardware.

A Lightning Strike Jolts Purchase of More Accessories

This metaphor has already gone too far, I know, but let’s get serious for a moment. One of the biggest implications of the iPhone 5 release – and presumably all future Apple device releases – is that of the new Lightning connector. Lightning replaces the 30-pin dock connector of past iPods, iPads and iPhones with an all-digital 8-pin connector that functions as a charger and data transfer bus.

In one swift move, Apple rendered many of the current iPhone accessories all but obsolete. The only option you have available to use your favorite stereo dock or car charger is to purchase an adapter, currently available through Apple for $29-$39 dollars and at Amazon for as low as $13. It is interesting to note, however, that comScore data show that for every ten iPhone 5 units sold online in September, only one Lightning adapter was sold. But that figure showed signs of increasing into the first week of October.

As we move towards what is projected to be another record-breaking holiday season for retail e-commerce, we can expect that new Lightning-compatible hardware will almost certainly be at the top of many people’s wish lists.

Your holiday shopping just might have gotten a whole lot easier.

Map Searches Shift from Desktops to Smartphones

webmaster@comscore.com (Wesley Jonker) — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 10:40:50 +0000

Apple’s recent foray into the maps market, in which they scrapped Google Maps from the iPhone 5 in favor of Apple’s own maps offering (which hadn’t worked through all the kinks) reminded me of that game and how unhappy I was when I got my geography answers wrong. That quest to search – and find – something elusive was foiled by an incorrect answer. The general public also voiced their displeasure, leading to an eventual mea culpa by Apple CEO Tim Cook. This scenario highlights just how important mapping, and more importantly, accurate mapping, has become to all of us.

Although we have had excellent desktop-based mapping services for sometime, the rise of smartphones has created a major shift in how and when consumers rely on these applications.

Desktop-Based Mapping vs. Mobile-Based Mapping
Visitation to Maps websites on desktop computers has been very consistent for a few years now, holding steady at between 95-100 million unique visitors during any given month, representing more than 40% of the U.S. online population, according to comScore Media Metrix. A sizable population of users, no doubt, but clearly not a category such as News or Social Networking, which reach more than 80% of the population.

It would appear, however, that maps on mobile devices have become a much greater necessity. In the past six months alone, according to comScore Mobile Metrix, the number of smartphone visitors to Maps websites and apps has jumped 24% to 92 million unique visitors – a monthly penetration of 83% among smartphone users. When you consider that more than 50% of all new handset purchases are smartphones (source: comScore MobiLens), there is still plenty of room for this market to continue its rapid expansion.

And as that shift occurs, there is emerging evidence showing that it is coming at the expense of desktop mapping.

Map Desktop Search Signals Platform Shift
One way we have seen this platform shift manifest is through search behavior online. Searches with a Mapping/Navigation intent on the Big 5 Engines are down 34% over the past 15 months, going from 74.8 million to 49.5 million in August. comScore Search Planner shows that search clicks to Map/Navigation sites show an even steeper decline, down 41% to just 55.2 million in August.

Search Clicks to Maps Sites June 2011 – August 2012

As desktop-based searches with mapping intent and search clicks to map websites both show declines, it’s clear that search as a discovery process for navigation on desktops is eroding. This trend signals a significant shift in intent, as consumers who once relied on being at a computer to search for directions before going somewhere are now happy to rely on those handy little computers in their pockets.

The Future of Location-Based Search Monetization
So while the top-line visitation numbers may remain strong on desktop computers, don’t let it fool you from thinking that this shift isn’t happening. Consumers are increasingly integrating mapping into their mobile lives and that behavior will only increase as location-based technology develops further. Apple’s first foray into maps may have been a temporary setback, but more competition in this market will only bring better technology and improved navigation services over time – and those advancements will continue to pull these searches away from desktop.

But there is opportunity for greater search monetization in the long run, because location-enabled search means the ability to deliver highly relevant paid results to potential customers in the vicinity or planning a trip to the area. And whichever mapping service delivers the best user experience is sure to receive the greatest spoils.

Battling Bots: comScore’s Ongoing Efforts to Detect and Remove Non-Human Traffic

webmaster@comscore.com (Wesley Jonker) — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 10:22:00 +0000

This challenge of filtering out NHT is one that is always evolving, particularly as the landscape becomes more social. In today’s world of digital media, content flows seamlessly across the digital landscape - bouncing from server to server, being exposed to multitudes of audiences and quickly being absorbed into the ether that is the Internet. Publishers invest heavily in making sure their media is continuously being ‘shared’, ‘liked’ and ‘fanned’ so that it may reach and attract new audiences that can be monetized. Such efforts would appear to be paying dividends, with ever-increasing numbers of visitors and events being observed.

But how do we really know for sure that there is an actual, living person accessing this content? It turns out that computer software specifically designed to mimic human behavior online – commonly known as bots – have massively inflated the number of media impressions associated with digital content as a direct result of the social sharing revolution. The increase in activities like registration, voting, commenting and sharing have contributed to NHT increasing from approximately 6% of all web traffic in 2011 to a whopping 36% this year.

This trend is similar in many ways to the spam epidemic that consumed the web back in the early 2000s when email emerged as the standard means of communication. Over the past decade, our industry has developed new techniques to become pretty effective at combating spam. Today, we are challenged with the effort of effectively combating NHT in a similar fashion.

How NHT Manifests Itself Today
Here is a typical scenario that an Internet user might experience:

“My browser seems to open automatically in the background and plays ads. No Adware or Anti-Virus programs I have seem to stop it. I don't actually SEE my browser running, I just hear the ads and see the browser.exe process running. Even If I quit thebrowser.exe process, it just comes back about 10 minutes later.”

Scenarios like the above are increasingly common today and they can generate browsing activity without the user’s intent. Full page pop-ups, pop-unders and browser hijacks that redirect the user to a site other than the one they intended to visit following a search click, are some examples of how unintended traffic can be generated. Hidden background processes spawn a chain of events that result in multiple redirects, hopping from server to server before finally reaching a publisher site.

Bots are only the tip of the iceberg with the NHT problem, and the deeper you dig the more interesting it gets. comScore has observed secondary sets of activity, generated from users’ computers while consuming media, that exists in a parallel thread on the user’s computer that they never see. These processes have an explicit intent of driving incremental usage to publisher sites and can therefore wreak havoc on both the publishers and the advertisers as it becomes harder to tell whether that content, and the monetization associated with it, is being delivered against an actual human.

Often NHT begins with a user’s machine being infected with some form of malware; either from a site they visited or bundled with a free application they download. A typical malware call would first reach a traffic re-seller. In some cases, the traffic re-seller would then attempt to assess the quality of the received traffic by routing the call through its own test servers and algorithms. The call is then redirected to either another traffic re-seller who serves as a middleman or directly to a publisher site. Even though the server call is completely hidden from the user and doesn’t occur within the user’s browser, it is able to trigger all the elements from the publisher’s web page, including web analytics calls and ads. One indicator of such an event’s deleterious effects: a recent comScore vCE study, which measures validated ad campaign delivery against human audiences, showed that just 2.8% of ads co-occurring with malware processes running on user’s machine were viewable to an actual web user.

In addition, malware processes don’t simply trigger web analytics calls on a publisher site but frequently generate a new cookie for the same user upon each call. When this NHT activity gets counted, it can significantly inflate the publishers’ web analytics reports for both unique cookies/visitors and pages viewed. These calls have evolved to such an advanced level that publishers are simply incapable of distinguishing this NHT from quality user-intended traffic and clicks.

Why Combating NHT is So Important
So why should we even care about NHT? The reality is that if not properly accounted for, this traffic gets counted as audiences and impressions for which marketers end up footing the bill. Recent studies have estimated bot traffic to be anywhere from 4% to 31% of total web traffic in the U.S., which translates to anywhere between $650 million and $4.7 billion of wasted marketing spend.

Invalid traffic exists to the detriment of the entire industry. Even those who might experience short term benefits, such as being able to claim a higher audience to advertisers, need to understand that invalid practices are being actively identified and might face the reputational downside of knowingly engaging in such practices. One of the ways to tackle this problem is to have a third-party company develop robust NHT detection systems dedicated to filtering out this activity so that audience and impression reporting reflect the behavior of actual people.

It is in the digital ecosystems’ collective interest to actively employ forensic web analysis to ensure that no one is unintentionally supporting non-user generated traffic. If such activity is discovered, publishers should immediately re-examine relationships with companies that might be enabling this activity. comScore has always taken proactive measures to ensure that NHT doesn’t count towards its digital audience estimates, and more than a dozen years later we continue to innovate our detection methods to make sure we’re staying two steps ahead of the game.

From Post to Pin to Purchase: How TheFancy.com is Changing the Way Social Media Makes Money

webmaster@comscore.com (Wesley Jonker) — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 07:35:59 +0000

We all know one of the most amazing aspects of the power in social media data is that its users are voluntarily providing lots of information about themselves. They’re saying “I like this! Look at this! Let’s go here!” And while the data itself is valuable, these social interactions also tend to elicit a high level of user engagement, which enables a healthy (and profitable) advertising revenue stream.

But ad dollars can pale in comparison to commerce dollars. It took Groupon less than 3 years using a transaction fee model to reach $2 Billion in annual revenue. Still, for most pure social media sites, those commerce dollars have thus far remained elusive. While social media sites may be effective at surfacing interesting commercial content, they have not yet figured out a scalable way to immediately drive purchase.

They would of course love to achieve this conversion nirvana, click-through oasis, or sales-lift Shangri-la. The moment when social media changes from the e-commerce highway to the destination is the moment the economics of the industry will be forever changed. But this code has yet to be cracked. Or has it?

Enter TheFancy.com.

With Fancy, if a visitor sees an incredible picture someone posted, he/she clicks the picture, and it literally provides a checkout option with the click. The layout feels like a cool blog, but everything on the page is immediately available to buy. How many millions of interesting items have people seen on blogs, only to never move past the picture on the screen to actually purchase it? What if the items that you are pinning, tweeting, posting, were easily available for you to buy it right then and there? Fancy is hoping (and betting) you’ll do exactly that.

According to comScore Media Metrix, Fancy has grown 252% since comScore began measuring it in August 2011. This dramatic growth still pales in comparison to Pinterest, which has jumped more than 3,000% during the same period. What’s interesting is that only 44% of Fancy users are from the U.S. (vs.70% for Pinterest), suggesting a more international appeal. In a sense, Fancy is the first class counterpart to Pinterest, and while it may prove difficult to catch lightning in a bottle quite like Pinterest has, it may well grow into a legitimate competitor soon.

Importantly, both sites attract a younger, more affluent audience, which is very attractive to advertisers and marketers. comScore Media Metrix shows Pinterest skew heavily towards females age 25-34, with a household income of $100,000+. Fancy skews towards females age 18-24, with a household income of $100,000+. So both have young, affluent audiences, but only one of them allows users to purchase a $12,000 watch in thirty seconds or less.

While Fancy has adopted some similar functionality to make the experience more accessible to a wider audience (e.g. Fancy allows you to “Fancy It” like Pinterest allows you to “pin” items), it is also pushing the boundaries of what’s been done in social media to date. Not only has it integrated a simple click-to-purchase functionality, but it also incentivizes users with actual money to invite their friends to join! Clearly commerce is an integral part of the entire experience. Is this evolution from posting, to pinning, to purchasing going to bleed into the larger players?

Turning "likes" into "wants" could signal the beginning of an important trend in social media monetization. Does the success of Fancy’s model mean that highly trafficked fashion blogs, food blogs and travel blogs will turn into e-commerce engines? And what will the battle be for the big online retailers to become the site that provides the price and checkout for those items? As more and more people become "trendsetters" and "tastemakers" and "influencers", will the e-commerce tide shift away from large retail sites to trendy blogs?

This all remains to be seen, of course. But I think it’s safe to say the days of social media being on the sidelines of direct-to-consumer e-commerce are numbered. They not only want to be in the buy-it-now game – they just might need to be if they are to maximize their monetization potential.

iPhone 5 Reaches Same Level of Online Sales in First 3 Days that iPhone 4S Reached in First Month

webmaster@comscore.com (Wesley Jonker) — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 11:42:00 +0000

According to Apple, iPhone 5 pre-orders have shattered the previous record set by the iPhone 4S during its October 2011 release. Data from comScore underscores this point even further. In just its first three days of availability, iPhone 5 U.S. online pre-orders reached 96 percent of the number of iPhone 4S online sales during the entire first month of its release! To say the iPhone 5 was heavily anticipated by Apple fans would be an understatement.

So what’s behind the record-breaking iPhone 5 sales? There seem to be a few factors at play. First, smartphone migration has meant that there are more people in the market for a smartphone than ever before – whether they are a first-time smartphone owner or upgrading from their previous smartphone. In fact, 24 more million Americans owned a smartphone in July 2012 compared to October 2011 when the iPhone 4S was released, according to comScore MobiLens.

Another potential explanation is that a substantial group of consumers held out for the iPhone 5. Looking at comScore e-commerce data on handset purchases, post-holiday Q1 traditionally sees the weakest sales of new devices with Q2 bouncing back. However, in 2012 handset purchases actually declined from Q1 to Q2. It’s highly possible that those people eligible for upgrades held out buying a new device in anticipation of the fall release of the iPhone 5.

AT&T Strongly Leads in Early Sales Among iPhone Carriers
that the iPhone 5 was the fastest-selling iPhone the company has ever offered. A deeper dive into comScore data revealed that AT&T accounted for 68 percent of total U.S. online sales in the first three days of the phone’s release (including carrier sales happening on Apple.com). As the original carrier of the iPhone and the exclusive carrier for several years, it is a safe assumption that AT&T is home to the highest share of iPhone enthusiasts. Further, owners of the iPhone 4 (which was released in June 2010) are now eligible for upgrades, providing an eager base of consumers ready and willing to purchase the iPhone 5 as soon as it was released. On the other hand, the iPhone 4 debuted on Verizon in February 2011 so these consumers are still several months away from their two-year contract upgrade.

But if history is any indication, the carrier share of iPhone sales is subject to change. If we look back at the launch of the iPhone 4S, AT&T led with 48 percent of online sales among the three carriers in the first three days. Verizon represented 35 percent of online sales while Sprint, which joined Verizon and AT&T as an official iPhone carrier with the release of the 4S, captured 17 percent. But by the end of the month the story had shifted, with Verizon driving 45 percent of online sales, followed closely by AT&T at 43 percent and Sprint accounting for the remaining 12 percent.

Heavy iPhone Searching Reveals Intense Consumer Interest in New Release
Consumers’ search activity also indicates strong interest in the iPhone 5 from Verizon and Sprint subscribers. An in-depth look at searches for the term “iPhone 5” in conjunction with a specific carrier name revealed that AT&T had the most carrier-specific searchers on the day of the release, but Verizon accounted for the majority of carrier specific searches and searchers from the launch date through the weekend (September 12-16). In total, iPhone 5 and Verizon searches reached 284,596 in total from September 12-16 compared to 172,610 searches for iPhone 5 and AT&T and 122,554 searches for iPhone 5 and Sprint. We would expect to see more Verizon and Sprint searchers to convert into purchasers in the coming weeks.

Regardless of carrier-specific queries, the iPhone 5 announcement caused a flurry of online search activity as Apple once again proved its expertise in pulling off product launches recognized in the mainstream. On September 12, 3 million people in the U.S. conducted searches on the term “iPhone 5” amassing a total of 6.3 million searches on the term. The following day saw search levels decline but still manage to exceed 4 million queries.

The iPhone 5 marks another milestone in Apple’s history of innovation and demonstrates just how cherished these tiny computing machines have become for consumers across the country and around the world. As fans get ready to line up, the story of the iPhone 5 is only just beginning.

comScore and 1871 Announce Partnership to Help Accelerate Chicago Area Startups

webmaster@comscore.com (Ferry Gijzel) — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 12:07:00 +0000

The 1871 space will gather entrepreneurs together, creating a community of mentors, partners, peers, developers and investors to spark innovation and grow successful companies. comScore will assist in helping these companies grow by providing complimentary access to our flagship web and mobile measurement services while they initially build their businesses. comScore’s analytics and data will provide key insights that entrepreneurs need to measure their companies’ in-market performance, better understand the digital landscape, design more effective digital marketing strategies, and help illustrate their companies’ value to potential advertisers and investors.

Chicago’s Recent Emergence as Tech Hotbed
In recent years, the Chicago area has become a hotbed of entrepreneurial activity, with numerous digital startups bursting onto the scene. A recent WSJ article entitled “A Start-Up Ecosystem Forms in Chicago” highlighted the increase in funding activity and collaborative environments that are helping get Chicago start-ups to the next level.

While Groupon might be the most recognizable name coming out of this city, there are many others blazing their own trails. Data shown on the Built in Chicago website reveals that 128 digital startups launched in Chicago in 2011 alone, 56% more than in 2010. These companies share a common characteristic in that they each leverage the Internet’s vast capabilities.

The appeal of Chicago startups has not been lost on the VC and Private Equity investment communities. In 2011, 77 Chicago companies raised a total of $1.45 billion, a staggering 431% higher than the total amount raised in 2010. And, while Groupon alone accounted for $972 million of the $1.45 billion total in 2011, even if we exclude Groupon, the other companies raised 76% more capital in 2011 than was raised by all companies in 2010. Besides Groupon, 11 companies each raised at least $10 million: Analyte Health, Savo, SMS Assist, Trunkclub, Braintree, SitterCity, Tastytrade, Coupon Cabin, Grubhub and Mu Sigma.

Also in 2011, 16 exit events (mergers, acquisitions or IPO’s) occurred involving Chicago digital companies, generating more than $2 billion of market value. From all the data that Built in Chicago has published, it’s clear that we have a vibrant and very valuable digital ecosystem in place in Chicago today.

Chicago’s Rich Startup History Rooted in Technological Breakthroughs
Interestingly, Chicago has been, for many years, associated with startup companies that exploited technological breakthroughs other than the Internet. I know this to be true because my career has been inextricably linked with Chicago and new technology. In the late 1970s, I managed the Chicago office for Market Science Associates (MSA), a Pittsburgh-based database analytics company. It was a time when UPC point-of-sale scanners were first being introduced into supermarkets, promising rich new data on consumer buying behavior. In conjunction with a West Coast company named TRIM (whose CEO went on to later start Catalina Marketing, the well known in-store couponing company), MSA built the country’s first market research panel of households who agreed to present ID cards when they checked out of their local supermarkets. The cashier simply entered their ID number into the checkout register and, voila, we obtained a continuous electronic measure of the SKU-level buying patterns of thousands of households. Contrast that with the previous manual methodology where households were asked to record the details of their purchases in written diaries!

A few years later, in 1980, I joined a young Chicago startup named Information Resources (IRI) which had not only built scanner household panels in two small cities but had also invented a “black box” which was attached to the TV sets of cooperating households, thereby allowing IRI to change -- as part of normal programming -- the TV advertising that the households were receiving. This was targetable TV by any other name – 32 years ago! IRI still uses the technology today to precisely measure the impact of TV advertising on consumer sales by comparing the UPC scanner purchases of panel households who received one TV advertising strategy (it could be ad weight, frequency or creative – or a combination of all three) with the buying behavior of households exposed to another ad strategy.

In 1985, IRI acquired a company named Management Decision Systems (MDS) founded by three professors from MIT and Wharton. MDS had developed the first relational, multi-dimensional, decision support software. We used it at IRI to analyze the massive databases that in-store scanners were by then generating across the country, while also selling the technology as a standalone software product. By 1996, IRI had grown to be the largest U.S. market research company, as designated by Advertising Age magazine.

Over the past twenty years, my involvement with new Chicago-based technology companies has also included board representation. From 1991 until 1999, I served on the board of Platinum Technology, Inc., a Chicago provider of mainframe tools and applications, during which time the company grew from $80 million to more than $1 Billion in annual revenues and established itself as a global leader in the software services industry. In 1999, Platinum Technology was acquired by Computer Associates in an all-cash transaction valued at $4.0 Billion -- at the time the largest-ever acquisition in the software industry. I was also a board member at U.S. Robotics, which leveraged proprietary manufacturing technology and the emergence of the Internet, to become the largest U.S. supplier of modems. In 1997, U.S. Robotics was acquired by 3Com in a transaction valued at $8 Billion. With the Internet boom, from 1990 to 2000, I served on the board of yesMail.com, a leading Chicago supplier of permission-based e-mail services. In March 2000, yesMail.com was acquired by CMGI for approximately $700 million. Today, I’m also a board member for Chicago-based InXpo, the country’s leading supplier of technology for conducting virtual events.

Let’s Help the Next Wave of Chicago Innovators
As a result of both my operational and board experience, I’ve been extensively involved with technological breakthroughs and the Chicago-based startup companies that have successfully exploited them. But, while I revel in the excitement of the many new opportunities in front of this next generation of entrepreneurs, I also know they will have their fair share of challenges in attempting to grow a new technology company from the ground up. It is important that the greater Chicago tech community lend a hand to help these brave young entrepreneurs succeed.

It has been especially gratifying to watch the Chicago digital tech community develop over the years and its emergence over the past several months, in particular, has been electrifying. Chicago has always been a great city for business and innovation, and comScore looks forward to helping the next wave of successful tech startups get off the ground and spread their wings.

Value Claims Improve Advertising Effectiveness in Recessionary Times

webmaster@comscore.com (Ferry Gijzel) — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 13:00:00 +0000

We know that consumers continue to be value-seekers when making brand choices, but we were curious whether – and to what extent – marketers have responded to this trend by increasing the use of value claims in their advertisements. We also wanted to understand whether value claims have been any more effective since the beginning of the recession. Our research suggests that not only have marketers responded with a dramatic increase in the use of value-claims, but that these ads are moving the needle on in-store sales of fast moving consumer goods (FMCG).

The ARS analytical database for FMCG was used to examine the use of value claims in U.S. TV commercials for which copy testing was conducted. We analyzed the incidence of TV commercials including value claims, as well as the lift in Share of Consumer Choice (comScore’s key advertising sales effectiveness metric, which has strong validation to predict in-market performance) for ads containing value claims versus all other ads. The data were segmented into Pre-Recession (2001-2007) and Post-Recession (2008-2011) time periods to understand the differences in marketing and consumer behavior.

The results showed that ads including a value claim rose from 5.6% of the FMCG database prior to the recession, to 10.8% in the time period since the start of the recession – a 93% percent increase. It’s perhaps not surprising to see such a stark increase in the usage of value claims post-recession, but were these ads actually effective?

While value claims generally proved effective prior to the recession, they have been much more effective since 2008. Specifically, the average increase in lift in Share of Consumer Choice for the ads with value claims versus all others doubled from +0.7 points prior to 2008 to +1.4 points since the recession began. The +1.4 increase represents about a 20% increase in the selling power of a typical TV advertisement. For a brand in a $2 billion per year FMCG category, the incremental lift in Share of Consumer Choice coming from value claims in a recession would translate into approximately $1 million in incremental sales (vs. an ad without a value claim) over the course of a quarter.

So while the use of value claims are not without their costs – which may include the cost of promotions or dilution of brand equity – they also prove to be quite effective in driving sales in a recession. And when consumers are so cost-conscious and focused on pinching every penny, brands must find ways to meet their needs. Value-based advertising is an effective way to accomplish that objective, and brands are likely to see results at the register.

This post was co-authored by Doug Crang, comScore Research Director

PrivacyChoice Awards comScore’s ScorecardResearch Highest Possible Rating of 50 out of 50 for Online Privacy Practices

webmaster@comscore.com (Ferry Gijzel) — Fri, 14 Sep 2012 12:44:00 +0000

comScore today announced that its Scorecard Research service has earned the highest possible rating of 50 out of 50 for its online privacy practices by PrivacyChoice, a leader in privacy technology innovation. PrivacyChoice evaluated ScorecardResearch on five major categories: Anonymity, Boundaries, Retention, Choice and Oversight and found that ScorecardResearch demonstrated the best practices across all five categories. The practices that were evaluated are described in the ScorecardResearch privacy policy.

ScorecardResearch’s 50 out of 50 Privacyscore helps in turn to boost the Privacyscores of companies who use comScore’s third-party site tagging, delivering a clear benefit to consumers and others in the online ecosystem that are mindful of responsible privacy practices.

In accordance with PrivacyChoice’s recognition, comScore has also become the first company to display the badge featuring its Privacyscore, giving publishers, app developers and consumers confidence that comScore is an industry leader in its approach to online privacy. The badge has been placed on the ScorecardResearch site.

This recognition is important because it comes amidst significant changes in the U.S. online privacy landscape, with regulators and lawmakers becoming increasingly interested in educating consumers about their online choices. In the past year, the comScore privacy team has worked with PrivacyChoice to present information about our practices in a manner that clearly communicates to the consumers how we steward the data we collect for market research purposes. Through our collaboration with PrivacyChoice we have been able to improve our already strong privacy standards to truly ‘best in class.’

comScore strongly believes that technology companies should take a leadership position on issues of consumer privacy to both protect consumers and foster an environment built on trust where businesses can continue to innovate and create value for customers. Our Privacyscore of 50 out of 50 is not only testament to our continued commitment to consumer privacy protection, but it also helps deliver value to our clients by ensuring that they, too, can achieve the highest possible Privacyscore when they work with us.

What’s Next for the iPhone?

webmaster@comscore.com (Ferry Gijzel) — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 12:38:00 +0000

In tracing the evolution of the iPhone over the past 5 years, we’ve also seen the iPhone popularize the use of mobile apps through the introduction of the App Store and significantly raise the profile of smartphones as devices used more broadly for mobile media consumption. Concurrently, we’ve seen the demographics of iPhone users shift from being predominantly male, affluent, and younger to having an equal split between genders, with the youngest and oldest age segments and users earning between $50-$75K figuring among the fastest growing segments.

With the release of newer iPhone models over the years, the device has grown in adoption not just because of improvements made, but also because of efforts made by Apple to bring the iPhone to a broader mass market. When the iPhone was first released in the U.S., it was made available only through a single carrier – AT&T (then Cingular). Since the release of the iPhone 4 on Verizon, Apple has continually broadened the network of wireless carriers for the iPhone and sold older generations of the phone at discounted prices, making the device more accessible to the average consumer.

Despite the availability of earlier generation iPhone models at significantly more affordable price points, the growth in the iPhone’s user base as of late appears to come primarily from adopters of more recently-released models. Today, nearly 2 in 5 of the 38.2 million Americans using iPhones are on the iPhone 4, which was released just two years ago. More impressive than that is the fact that 35 percent of iPhone users today are on the iPhone 4S, which was released less than a year ago.

With the impending release of the next iteration of the iPhone, all eyes will be focused on the changes that the next generation of this device brings to the market. As we observed prior to the release of the iPhone 4S, any move that Apple makes could have an impact on the mobile industry at large. Among the new features rumored to be included in the new iPhone, the capacity to support LTE network connectivity stands out as perhaps one of the most heavily-anticipated improvements to the device and one that represents a significant upgrade to the mobile web experience.

Although less than 10 percent of smartphone users currently use LTE-enabled devices, we have seen adoption of LTE-enabled phones increase nearly tenfold in the past year. This growth may reflect both that device manufacturers increasingly see the value of supporting LTE and that mobile users have a willingness to pay to support their demand for faster mobile media consumption.

If the new iPhone does support LTE, it could indicate that Apple is betting that faster mobile connectivity will usher in the future of the industry, driving greater mobile media consumption and paving the way for additional shifts in the way people already use their smartphones. What could this mean for the mobile industry at large? Across the board, having the iPhone support LTE could be a boost to LTE adoption. At the moment, wireless networks such as Verizon which already have a robust infrastructure in place to support LTE stand to gain an advantage. But as other carriers continue to build up their own LTE capabilities, such an advantage may be fleeting.

What can be said with certainty is that whatever changes Apple introduces with the next iPhone, it will reshape not just the mobile media landscape but the very complexion of the digital media industry at large.

Search: Which Country Takes the Gold Medal?

webmaster@comscore.com (Ferry Gijzel) — Wed, 05 Sep 2012 12:31:00 +0000

Even though the Olympic flame is on its way to the next host city, there’s a global search competition that continues well beyond the closing ceremonies and final medal count. People’s online search behavior isn’t quite as gut-wrenching with the drama (and the glory) of the Olympics itself, but it does parallel the fact that everyone participates, every country has its own story to tell, and every country’s story is different.

Search Continues Worldwide Growth
Evaluating search growth centers around two primary metrics:

• Number of Searchers
• Total Searches Conducted

From these numbers, we can then derive a variety of consumption metrics such as Searches per Searcher and Searcher Conversion. For this analysis, I used comScore qSearch, which is based on a two million desktop/PC based searcher panel covering more than 170 countries.

In June 2012, 1.47 billion searchers conducted 173 billion searches (with year-over-year increases of 10% and 12%, respectively), making for 117 searches for every searcher on the planet. If you were to add in the number of searches now performed on mobile devices and tablets, the numbers would be even more staggering. Social Media may get most of the news clippings lately, but search activity is still one of the most popular activities on the Internet.

Search is a relatively mature online activity that will not continue to experience double digit growth in new searchers forever, so the ongoing growth opportunity would appear to be in the number of searches each person conducts. But 117 searches per searcher worldwide already seems like a lot, doesn’t it? However, when you break this number down by different regions and countries, you begin to get a better sense of where the search growth will come from in succeeding years.

Search Utilization by Region

While Europe and Asia Pac have the highest number of searchers and generate the highest overall volume of search queries, the search utilization by region shows a different story with Latin America taking the gold:

• Latin America: 162
• Europe: 135
• North America: 129
• Asia Pacific: 97
• Middle East-Africa: 92
Which Country Takes Search Gold in 2012?

Latin America’s 162 searches per searcher is nearly 40% greater than the worldwide average. Within Latin America, Peru is a surprising leader with 209 searches per searcher. Even Brazil, with the lowest search intensity in the region still saw an average of 145 searchers per searcher.

On the other hand, Asia Pacific is 20% below the worldwide average. Japan leads the region with 147 searches per searcher, but China – still very much a developing market in this regard – drags down the regional average with just 68 searches per searcher.

But the heaviest search market of all…

Turkey -- with 217 searches per searcher.

Just as every Olympic country has areas of strength and weakness, every region and country around the world differs in their use of search. The reasons vary greatly -- from differences in culture to levels of broadband internet penetration to device preference --but each country will continue to reach higher as it pursues search gold. While Turkey walks away with the gold medal this year, there’s no telling what the global search market will look like four years from now but one thing is clear: it’s anyone’s medal to take.

Olympic Frenzy Fuels Search Activity Throughout the Games

webmaster@comscore.com (Ferry Gijzel) — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 16:15:00 +0000

Tablets Serve as Valuable Vehicle for Olympics-Related Searches
To set the stage for this analysis, the comScore Custom Analytics team looked at the volume of Olympics-related searches out of the total number of U.S. searches leading to sports sites over the course of the Olympics. The days around the opening weekend of the Games exhibited the highest share for Olympics-related searches, with nearly 60 percent of searches conducted on July 28th having to do with the Olympics. Over the course of the Games, Olympics-related searches comprised nearly a third of all searches leading to sports sites, which confirms the scale of interest in the Games.

In the second blog post in this series, Small Screens for Big Games, we discussed how the emergence of smartphones and tablets as widely-adopted consumer technologies has had an influence on people’s consumption of sports content in their day-to-day lives. In June 2012, nearly 2 in 5 smartphone users in both the U.S. and UK reported using their phones to access sports information in the month. New data from comScore TabLens shows that among tablet owners in the U.S., an even larger percentage – 46.4 percent – reported having consumed sports content on their tablets in the same month.

These shifts in people’s consumption habits are reflected in the platform breakdown of Olympics-related searches as a percentage of total U.S. searches during the Games. In the previous chart, we saw that Olympics-related searches accounted for nearly a third of all searches leading to sports sites across all platforms. The chart below breaks out that traffic and shows this metric individually for tablets, mobile devices, and computers. While computers accounted for the majority of Olympics-related searches in terms of absolute numbers, tablets actually showed the highest percentage of Olympics-related searches.

Despite having only gained popularity in recent years, tablets have already had a noteworthy impact on various consumer activities, with news and entertainment standing out as areas where tablets already see significant use. Evidenced by the sizeable share of Olympics-related searches made on tablets, it seems tablet owners turned to their devices more to seek information on the Games than did the general mobile and computer audience. With tablets lending themselves well to being used in tandem with TV or for viewing of real time video streams of Olympic events, it’s likely that heavy searching is the result of people simultaneously watching the Olympics and searching for related event or athlete information on their tablets.

Trending: The Olympic Search Leaderboard
Over the course of the Games, various stories of athletic feats – ranging from Michael Phelps’ breaking the Olympic record for total medals to Usain Bolt’s victorious finishes – dominated the airwaves. But what did the public really find interesting throughout the games?

In the U.S., basketball, gymnastics, soccer, swimming, and track and field garnered the most PC searches over the course of the Games, buoyed by the successful performances of American athletes in these fields. Gymnastics, in particular, received the greatest number of searches out of all the Olympic sports on the days of the team finals and individual all-around rounds as the U.S. Women’s Team struck gold, outpacing even interest in the strong performances of swimmers Michael Phelps, Ryan Lochte, and Missy Franklin.

In contrast, British spectators found basketball, boxing, cycling, soccer, and tennis to be the most compelling, with tennis seeing a surge in searches on the day of the tennis final won by Andy Murray. Searches for soccer-related news maintained a steady constant pace throughout, peaking during the semifinal matches, with cycling following a similar trend, showing upticks following the wins of cyclists Elizabeth Armitstead, Bradley Wiggins and Victoria Pendleton.

Athletes who attracted the public’s attention in both countries stood out for both their athletic prowess and accomplishments and, in some cases, for interesting moments captured during the Games. In the U.S., Michael Phelps drew the most searches among American Olympians, outpacing the second most-searched athlete by more than a factor of 2. McKayla Maroney’s famous scowl, captured after her second-place finish at her best event and immortalized with the Tumblr meme “McKayla is not impressed,” propelled her into the second spot for searches, followed by all-around winner Gabby Douglas. In the UK, track and field athlete Jessica Ennis drew the greatest number of searches among British Olympians during the games, boosted by her gold medal win in the heptathlon. Andy Murray and Bradley Wiggins ranked second and third in terms of searches.

Wrapping Up the Olympic Search Story
These search-driven insights help paint a picture of what the future of sporting events could look like, as audiences become increasingly savvy regarding following events in real-time through multiple devices. Ultimately, what the Olympic search story across multiple platforms tells us is that spectators of sporting events are no longer just looking to a single screen for information – and that perhaps even more than mobile phones, tablets are emerging as a valued source of news and video viewing for big gaming events such as the Olympics.

What does this mean for sports in the digital age? No longer are spectators limited to simply catching events as they appear on television; today, people can follow contests live and get results on their computer screens, tablets, even on their mobile devices. With an increasingly social cross-media environment emerging, people have more options than ever to follow the sporting events that they care about, however they want to. As the 2012 Olympics have shown, we are ushering in an era of greater participation for spectators – one that will surely grow as people the world over increasingly integrate their consumption of media across multiple platforms into their day-to-day lives.

Why Groupon and LivingSocial are Flexing their M-Commerce Muscle

webmaster@comscore.com (Ferry Gijzel) — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 16:22:00 +0000

While mobile is still considered a rounding error for many digital businesses, there is broad acknowledgement that it is rapidly increasing in importance. But I think many would be surprised to see just how quickly it has become central to some big companies and what that tells us about the changing shape of digital business today.

In examining data from comScore’s recently introduced behavioral mobile measurement service Mobile Metrix, we saw evidence that was consistent with what Mason reported during Groupon’s earnings call. We were surprised to find that Groupon – and its top competitor LivingSocial – are already attracting larger audiences on mobile devices than via the traditional desktop web. Groupon’s July 2012 mobile web + app audience (age 18+ on iOS, Android and RIM platforms) was 17.8 million visitors, while its comparable desktop audience was 12.4 million. LivingSocial had a total mobile audience of 8.8 million visitors vs. 7.3 million via desktop. If we just look at Groupon’s mobile web or mobile app audiences in isolation, they are each on par with its desktop audience, and the same can be said of LivingSocial’s mobile web audience.

Groupon and LivingSocial are two great examples of strong players in the m-commerce market, but it is worth examining why they fare particularly well in this channel. After all, not every e-commerce player maintains such an established mobile presence – and some are almost nowhere to be found.

There are several key factors that can make an e-commerce company more likely to perform well in the mobile environment, and to some extent each of the following advantages apply in some way to Groupon and LivingSocial.

You own app real estate – for most mobile consumers, there is scarcity in the amount of app real estate they will allocate. Similar to one’s web bookmarks, not every site will make the cut. So while a person might visit 20 or 30 different retailers over the course of a year on the web, they might only download 3 or 4 retailers’ mobile apps. You need to have a strong brand and be a regular shopping channel in order to make that cut. For many consumers, Groupon and LivingSocial check that box.
Time is of the essence – when a purchase experience is time-sensitive (daily deals, flash sales, auctions, etc.) consumers are more likely to want an app to stay keyed in. eBay is one of strong leaders in m-commerce because people want to stay on top of their auctions, and the ‘daily deal’ phenomenon also helps explain why many consumers see Groupon and LivingSocial as must-haves on their app list.
Your info is already inputted – m-commerce transactions are facilitated immensely when a customer already has his/her payment information inputted to the retailer. It’s hard enough to type in payment info via the web on a small screen computer or tablet, but the smaller screen of mobile devices make this process significantly more tedious. Consumers will click the “buy” button a lot more readily if they don’t need to go through this process each time.
You have regular communications with the customer – email remains an important marketing channel for retailers, and many customers find near daily emails in their inbox from their favorite ones. When people are on-the-go – perhaps on their way to work every morning – they often check these types of emails and will sometimes click-through to the retailer’s website. This action can drive a significant amount of mobile web traffic, and as we can see with Groupon and LivingSocial – and their daily emails – their mobile web traffic is nearly equal to their desktop web traffic.
Location Matters – Both Groupon and LivingSocial play in the local commerce market, and when “local” is an important part of your value proposition it tends to drive more mobile behavior. Groupon Now enables customers to search for deals within a certain radius of their current location, which provides more incentive to engage with the brand via one’s mobile device.

Because Groupon and LivingSocial can boast several of these advantages, we should not be surprised to see them attracting large audiences via mobile. What is surprising is that we are seeing strong evidence that for some companies mobile might soon be a more important sales channel than desktop given its ability to generate a higher audience.

I suspect that as smartphone penetration soars past 50% of mobile devices this year, we will begin to see more businesses – and perhaps the industry as a whole – take mobile commerce much more seriously. The questions businesses must be asking themselves is whether or not they’re prepared to take advantage of mobile technology, and if the answer is ‘no’ will they be left at a permanent disadvantage in one of the most important commerce transitions we have seen in recent memory?

Romney’s Online Advertising Ramps Up as Obama Ads Tick Down in July

webmaster@comscore.com (Ferry Gijzel) — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 16:24:00 +0000

During the first five months of 2012, Obama ads overwhelmed Romney ads by a factor of 20-60x as they delivered 800 million+ impressions a month. By June, Obama ads had reached a peak of 1.2 billion impressions. In that same month, however, the Romney campaign began to make its move with its first month delivering more than 100 million impressions (174 million to be specific). But July saw a significant narrowing of the gap as the Obama campaign pulled back to 921 million ads while Romney doubled its previous month total to 350 million impressions.

True, the Obama campaign still maintains a sizeable lead in the display advertising department, but after several months of running at 20-60x Romney it boasted just a 2.6x margin in July. With the Romney war chest continuing to build, we can expect to see Romney’s ad numbers grow and continue to narrow the gap in the critical final months leading up to the election.

Digital Scarcity Improves the Economics of Online Advertising

webmaster@comscore.com (Ferry Gijzel) — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 16:27:00 +0000

While digital media has continued to grow over the years, a variety of factors have also inhibited that growth. The current online advertising ecosystem has in many ways become very complex, featuring a multitude of players in a crowded value chain, with limited transparency as to which ads were visible and where they appeared. Unlike other forms of media, in digital it’s possible (even common) for ads to be served but not appear in front of a consumer. In fact, some served ads never make it into a consumer’s viewport, and are therefore never have the chance to be seen. In addition, the cost of producing an incremental digital ad is either zero or near zero. These dynamics have created an unlimited supply of display ad inventory with a gaping inability to differentiate high quality inventory from low or no quality inventory.

Much of this can be attributed to the “served impression” standard, which has historically been the basis of buying and selling digital ads. While it’s understandable that this came to be the currency as there were no better alternatives, the reality is that when each of the players in the ecosystem gets credit for an ad simply being served as opposed to actually being viewable by a consumer (and validated as being served legitimately in the intended geography and in a brand safe environment), the incentive is to promote quantity over quality. The result is that the average web page is cluttered with ads in every corner of the screen, many of which never have the opportunity to make an impact. Low quality or non-visible ad impressions leads to weaker campaign performance, providing advertisers less incentive to advertise and ultimately leading to lower CPMs for publishers.

With comScore’s introduction of validated Campaign Essentials™ (vCE) in January 2012, we set out to radically improve and simplify the measurement of display ad campaigns by determining when an ad is actually viewable, delivered legitimately to consumers absent non-human traffic, in the right geography and in a brand safe environment. When ad campaigns are validated across these dimensions, advertisers can ensure that the only ads being counted are the one with an ability to impact their target audience and that their campaign performance is not being polluted by the existence of wasted impressions. Having greater confidence in the medium helps advertisers justify increased investment in digital.

For publishers, the increased transparency around the viewability of certain ad inventory incentivizes them to remove ad clutter and optimize their design to deliver an improved aesthetic for users and a better canvas for advertisers. This increased transparency will also enable publishers to ‘unearth the gold below the fold’ and better monetize their existing inventory, particularly those ads which appear further down the page but still draw a strong audience and maintain high viewability.

The long-held promise of digital is that as the most measurable of all media it would inevitably pull advertising dollars from print and TV. While it has clearly been able to do so from print, the same cannot be said of TV, in part because of the uncertainty that has continued to surround the performance of digital ads. With validated impressions and validated GRPs, the digital channel now offers metrics that are truly cross-media comparable with TV because ad impressions are predicated on the same ‘opportunity to see’ standard. With consistency across media, dollars can flow more easily towards the media that are delivering the greatest ROI.

It’s time for digital to get its fair value as an advertising medium, and that will only happen through improved transparency and better accountability for the ads that are delivered. Embracing digital scarcity will necessarily change the supply-and-demand equation for online ads, and with it the fundamental economics of an industry ready to realize its full potential.

Small Screens for Big Games: How Mobile Phones and Tablets are Influencing the World’s Biggest Sporting Event

webmaster@comscore.com (Ferry Gijzel) — Fri, 10 Aug 2012 12:52:00 +0000

To put things in perspective, during the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing just 20 million people in the U.S. owned a smartphone compared to the more than 110 million that own one today. Further, tablets as we know them were not even an option for consumers with the first iPad still two years away from its launch. To say much has changed in consumer technology since the 2008 Beijing Games would be a strong understatement.

If we take a look at people accessing sports content on their mobile phones, the growth among UK and U.S. audiences is impressive. In June 2012, 12.3 million people engaged with sports info on their mobile phones in the UK, jumping 36 percent in the past year. More people are not only accessing sports content on these small screens, but people are accessing with increasing frequency. Of these 12.3 million people, 3.6 million of them accessed sports content on their phones nearly every day, up 41 percent from just a year ago.

The rising adoption of tablets has also influenced how people consume sports content. In the U.S., new data from comScore TabLens shows that tablet owners are even more likely to interact with sports content than their smartphone counterparts. In June, nearly half of tablet owners accessed sports info on their device, compared to 38.6 percent of smartphone owners. Tablet owners were also more likely to access sports content on a daily basis, with 17.3 percent of tablet users doing so compared to 14.1 percent of smartphone owners.

Understanding how tablets and mobile phones are influencing how people connect to digital content is essential for today’s marketers, but understanding how these devices influence cross-platform media consumption provides even further evidence of the rise of the multi-device consumer.

Keeping up with the Games often involves seeking the latest updates from news sources, an activity that has become increasingly easy with the variety of news providers making their content easily accessible via mobile phones and tablets. If we look at UK page view traffic to News/Information sites on the first full day of the Games (Saturday, July 28), we find different patterns of relative consumption appear across the three main device categories – PC, Tablets and Mobile Phones. Computers drove less relative traffic to news destinations during the first part of the day, compared to tablets and mobile devices. Tablets saw higher relative use in the morning hours, as tablet owners were more likely to browse news leisurely through these devices on a weekend morning. Tablets saw their highest relative usage in the evening hours, as people were more likely to curl up with their device before heading to bed. Reflecting their ubiquitous nature, mobile phones – which are always within an arm’s reach – had the greatest traffic stability over the course of the day when compared to tablets and PCs.

These differing trends highlight how consumers depend on a variety of devices to consume information according to their needs at the moment and broadly illustrate an overall shift toward cross-platform digital media consumption through multiple device touchpoints. It is clear that today’s Olympic fans and consumers everywhere have a growing number of ways to access content, presenting marketers with expanding opportunities to reach today’s connected consumer, along with new challenges in understanding this increasingly complex, multi-platform landscape.

As the 2012 Games come to a close, it is exciting to wonder what innovations will shape how fans experience the 2016 Summer Games. What new devices will exist? What new technologies will influence how people consume content? What new user experiences will these technologies create? Remembering how far we have come since Beijing demonstrates the nearly endless possibilities for what we can expect in the next four years.

Click here to catch up to all the latest comScore at the Games action.

Getting the Most out of the Games: How Campaign Optimization Can Drive ROI

webmaster@comscore.com (Ferry Gijzel) — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 12:59:00 +0000

Everyone seems to have caught Olympic fever this summer, and in addition to this being good news for the athletes competing, this is also very good news for the hundreds of brands around the globe who have invested heavily in advertising during the Games. Make no mistake about it, the investments have been huge: NBC, the exclusive Olympics coverage provider in the U.S., reported ad revenue for the 2012 Games surpassed $1 billion ($250 million more than in Beijing), with $60 million of those dollars being spent on digital (3x the amount spent in 2004). Digital advertising also appears to be a gold-medal winner in the host country of Great Britain, where the Games are being broadcast sans advertising on the BBC, freeing up more dollars for digital.

As I think about the amount of money spent online (and to a much greater extent on TV and traditional media) during this brief moment in time, I can’t help but realize that these advertisers, much like the Olympic athletes themselves, only have one shot to get it right in an arena where so much can go wrong.

From hitting a target audience to making sure online ads land next to brand safe content, and from ensuring ads appear in geographic markets where their product is sold to verifying viewability, it is clear that there is significant room for error. But of course advertising during the Olympics also represents an enormous opportunity -- opportunity to reach a highly engaged audience, opportunity to identify strong performing placements and opportunity to optimize campaigns in-flight to generate the greatest impact.

A global comScore study involving dozens of the world’s leading marketers assessed the extent to which this opportunity for improvement in delivering online campaigns exists – and the results are eye-opening.

On average, 30%-37% of ad impressions were not in-view in the U.S., Canada and EU, meaning they did not deliver an opportunity to be seen. There was also great variation across sites where the campaigns ran, illustrating that even for major advertisers making premium buys, there is a lot of room for improvement.
72% of U.S. campaigns and 67% of EU campaigns had at least some impressions that were delivered adjacent to inappropriate content. While this affected only a tiny fraction of the billions of impressions analyzed (<1%), the number of people exposed to these ads was not inconsequential. Even with the most premium of executions, brand safety should be an utmost concern for advertisers.
Geographic IP targeting tends to be fairly accurate at the country level, with error rates in the U.S. and EU hovering around 5% on average. On an individual campaign basis, error rates can reach as high as 15% in the U.S. and 27% in the EU, which can translate to a significant amount of ad dollars.
Non-human traffic ranged from 4 to 11%, again demonstrating a significant portion of impressions that never had an opportunity to make an impact.

Having access to this type of data, which can be reported by publisher, placement and creative throughout a campaign’s flight, is just what advertisers need to capitalize on their “one shot to get it right” during the Olympics. comScore’s validated Campaign Essentials provides them this access by delivering deep campaign insights and enabling in-flight optimization in a single tool so advertisers can effectively:

Eliminate sub-optimal delivery and improve campaign performance throughout the duration of the campaign. Often, this type of in-flight campaign optimization can mean huge savings in terms of cost and effectiveness.
Improve the ROI of digital by eliminating waste and also measuring effectiveness using validated, not gross, impressions. Often, the use of gross impressions – which includes ads that didn’t have a chance to make an impact – can dilute the measured impact of digital advertising. And why would any advertiser want to measure the effect of advertising on someone who never actually had an opportunity to see an ad?
Compare across channels using a cross-media comparable GRP metric, like the validated GRP (vGRP). Again, through the use of validated, versus gross, impressions the vGRP removes any noise from the metric, providing a more apples-to-apples comparison to the traditional GRP.

Today, many of our clients are using vCE to monitor and optimize their Olympic campaigns, and we are eager to learn about the impact of this tool on improving their results. What is perhaps most fascinating about all of this is that just four years ago, during the Beijing Olympics, there was little awareness of the issues around campaign validation and the tools for optimizing advertising results didn’t exist. Instead, advertisers largely had to let their campaigns take flight, cover their eyes, hold their breath and hope the investment would pay off. Just as the bar continues to be raised for Olympic athletes around the world, so too has the bar been raised for members of the digital ad ecosystem.

Click here to catch up to all the latest comScore at the Games action.

MRC Accredits comScore vCE Validation, Including Cross-Domain iFrame Measurement

webmaster@comscore.com (Ferry Gijzel) — Thu, 02 Aug 2012 14:01:00 +0000

This is an important milestone for comScore and reflects our firm commitment to innovation; to transparency and disclosure; and, to assuring that advertisers and agencies have the analytic tools in place to evaluate digital as a seamless part of a holistic, optimized multi-platform media plan.

A Commitment to Innovation
When we formally entered the ad verification space last year with the acquisition of AdXpose, we knew that there was a “Great White Whale” looming in the measurement and reporting on ad visibility: the unfriendly, cross-domain iframe. At the time we acquired AdXpose, none of the ad verification services were able to see into such iframes — meaning that industry ad verification data was typically based on technology that was unable to detect upwards of 60% of the inventory.

Shortly after the AdXpose acquisition, our engineers developed a proprietary, patented and patent-pending solution to address the broader verification challenge, including the unfriendly iframe problem. In fact, when comScore conducted a trial of vCE across 12 major advertisers, those campaigns included all iframes, including cross-domain iframes.

Over the past 9 or 10 months, we’ve had a lot of meetings with advertisers, agencies, publishers, and key industry associations, where we talked about our cross-domain iframe solution. More than once, we were met with skepticism and disbelief; it was as if we’d just said we’ve killed Sasquatch! The challenge of the unfriendly iframe had truly assumed almost mythic proportions.

To this day, there are skeptics in the industry who do not believe that the thing we claim to do — to see into the unfriendly iframe — is possible.

That’s a big reason why this MRC accreditation is especially gratifying. Because now you don’t have to take our word that we can, indeed, see into the cross-domain iframe; you can take theirs.* The MRC auditors specifically (and with diligence) reviewed and tested the technology, implementation, and performance of our cross-domain solution. It’s been thoroughly vetted. It’s accredited. It works.

A Commitment to Transparency
The Making Measurement Make Sense (3MS) initiative, a joint initiative of IAB, the 4As and the ANA, has published five core pillars for digital measurement. The first, of course, was to switch from a served to a viewable impression standard, which we’ve now done.

Increasingly, as the digital medium matures, we believe that the metrics that drive the business must be open, transparent, and auditable. comScore is committed to providing this level of transparency. Getting the validation component of vCE audited and accredited was a company priority from the CEO on down, and while you may not believe that it takes a village to raise a child, I can assure you, it takes a whole company to accredit a measurement service! The credit for the vCE Validation accreditation is rightfully spread across hundreds of my hard-working colleagues.

Perhaps more important though, we have now fully baked auditability into our corporate DNA. While our work with the MRC has naturally led the way, the MRC is by no means the only audit body we work with. Just this year we’ve worked with The Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) here in the U.S.; ABC UK in the United Kingdom; CESP in France; and both MESA and OJD in Spain. In fact, this is the fourth audit we’ve passed in 2012, preceded by the ABC’s certification of the comScore GSMA offering in the UK; that same organization’s certification of vCE; and OJD’s audit of comScore Direct and the census data we collect as part of the Media Metrix offering in Spain. I am loath to speak about audits in process, but multiple audits — in the U.S. and around the world — are ongoing.

A Commitment to Multi-Platform Analytics
comScore was founded with a mission to “measure the digital world.” Thirteen years on, it has become axiomatic that all media are becoming digital — this becomes clearer each time we read the tablet edition of our favorite magazine, or watch the latest viral video clip on our smartphone.

There has long been a push in the digital space to make the medium “look more like television” in order to make it hospitable to brand advertisers. In truth though, television has been on a long and inexorable march to becoming more like digital — indeed, to becoming digital. Thanks to the digital set top box, already the majority of TV ad impressions in the U.S. are distributed — served — digitally into the consumer’s home. And we all know that addressable TV advertising is coming, and that very soon we’ll all be able to watch any program we want, on any screen, on demand.

comScore is committed to engineering all our products and services in a fashion that makes them forward-compatible. With respect to tools like Media Metrix and vCE, which have widespread marketplace adoption, this means a future where PC-accessed Internet, online video, mobile, and TV data will all exist together, so that media planners will have the same freedom in selecting media vehicles as the consumers they seek to reach.

The accreditation of vCE Validation marks a significant milestone on that multi-platform journey. Advertisers want to be able to move dollars between media platforms with a clear understanding of how those dollars are working. The due diligence underpinning the 3MS initiative has made clear that to advertisers, there is a disconnect between “I bought an impression” and “someone had an ‘opportunity to see’ (OTS) that impression.” This disconnect has been, whether we like to hear it or not, a major advertiser objection in moving money to digital. The accreditation of vCE Validation is an important first step in assuring advertisers that digital media can deliver the same assurance of OTS as TV and other media. With this assurance, advertisers will be more inclined to move ad spend back and forth across platforms.

As comScore introduces multi-platform analytics throughout our product suite, the significance of this development will become increasingly apparent, as advertisers, agencies and publishers work together to find the best ways for advertising to deliver on advertiser objectives, regardless of platform.

comScore’s commitment to you is that we will continue to innovate, in as transparent a fashion as possible, as we build analytic solutions that allow planners, buyers and sellers of media to act with nimbleness and confidence in designing and delivering compelling messages to consumers across platforms.

* comScore's accreditation currently includes our ability to see into unfriendly cross-domain iFrames, excluding those occurring in Webkit browsers (i.e., Chrome and Safari.) For unfriendly cross-domain iFrames appearing in Webkit browsers, we are able to project viewability based on the viewability of campaign-specific, like placements in unfriendly iFrames in non-webkit browsers. This projection for webkit browsers is included in the vCE Audience module, which is now under review by the MRC, and is coming to the Validation module once audited by the MRC.

How Search is Helping Quora Break Through to the Mass Market

webmaster@comscore.com (Ferry Gijzel) — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 16:09:00 +0000

But what about our more complex questions that require us to use more than a few simple terms for navigation? It gets a bit more complicated when our questions expand beyond basic queries and take on topics that require subjective human answers. Questions such as “Why would I choose this university over another?” or “Why do some people love New York city and others hate it?” necessitate more nuanced answers, and the Q&A/Reference industry is evolving to better address them. One of the important startups in this space is Quora, which is fast becoming the trusted Q&A site for the internet cognoscenti.

User Generated Content vs. Premium Content
Like Quora, traditional Q&A/Reference websites have relied significantly on user-generated content (UGC) to drive the website experience. But not all UGC is created equal, with it ranging from amateur to more professionally-produced.

Wikipedia and Yahoo! Answers, current leaders in the Reference/Q&A market, feature content comprised mainly of crowd-sourced material that goes through a basic but somewhat unofficial editorial process. By all means there is a huge market for this type of content, but as we have seen with the evolution of the Internet, premium content often drives greater value for the average user and for the publishers themselves. In the online video space, we have seen this trend manifest itself in the recent success of Hulu and YouTube’s push of its Web TV partner channels.

A similar type of evolution may be happening in the Reference/Q&A space as Internet users are demonstrating an ever increasing need for premium content answers. This has created an opening in the market for a site like Quora.

Quora’s Premium Content Helping its Search Relevance
Quora is a bit different from the other major players in the reference space, with its focus on cultivating an environment dominated by topic experts, such as Doctors, Economists, Ph.Ds., and other industry insiders. Through a “credits”-based Q&A ranking system and a well-informed collective intelligence, the answers that are delivered generally have more depth and expert opinion than the straight fact based delivery of information one would find on Wikipedia.

Quora is seeing tremendous growth of late. Media Metrix shows that traffic to the site has increased by nearly 300% over the past year to more than 1.5 million visitors in June. This is an implicit and explicit agreement on the value that the site is driving in the marketplace.

What’s interesting, however, is that Quora’s growth doesn’t appear to be due to the fact it’s quickly becoming a household name – at least outside of Silicon Valley. When reviewing the search term data on the term “Quora”, use of the term is virtually non-existent, suggesting minimal brand recognition among the broader consumer Internet.

So what is behind such rapid consumer uptake? In a word: search.

Currently, search drives upwards of 50% of Quora’s traffic. Similar to other reference websites out there, it is Quora’s ability to answer highly specific questions that searchers are asking that is propelling its ascent -- organic growth in its purest form. Search engines are pulling up Quora content to answer complex questions, and as more searchers click on Quora links, visit and return to the site, and link back to it, these “votes” in favor of Quora as a relevant destination help improve its organic search rankings over time. Using comScore Search Planner, We can see below how the number of search clicks to Quora (all organic) has dramatically increased over the past year.

So Quora’s fantastic growth isn’t necessarily because it has become a branded destination and that is why people go there to ask questions, it is the fact that their answers are as compelling as they are and the search engines algorithms are determining that this should be on your short list of Q&A destinations. Wikipedia and Yahoo! Answers may be big, and are still the dominant players in the reference space, but there is an opportunity for niche sites like Quora, which focus on premium Q&A content, to emerge as well. UGC from the masses may help address the basics, but premium content from experts is addressing our more complex information needs. And given the almost inherent quality and relevance of its content, Quora seems poised to ride the Google wave even higher and potentially find its way into the mass market before long.

Firefox vs. Internet Explorer

webmaster@comscore.com (Wesley Jonker) — Sun, 22 Jul 2012 18:59:51 +0000

Welcome to my first posting on comScore Voices. Here, I’ll take the opportunity to discuss topics and provide information that I hope will be relevant – and valuable – to anyone who is keenly interested in the continued development of the Internet as a powerful platform for consumers and marketers alike. I’ll also share some of the more important lessons I’ve learned over the course of my career, which includes more than a decade as the CEO of a large public market research company. I’ll leave it to my fellow bloggers from the senior ranks of comScore to outline the objectives they have set for their own postings.

As I was thinking about my first post, a comScore study came to mind that I thought would be of particular interest to the blogosphere. In this study, we examined the differences between those people who use Mozilla’s Firefox as their primary browser versus those who use Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.

Firefox, the upstart in the browser wars, has carved out a meaningful market share against IE.

Our study proves what many might have suspected: Firefox users are demographically different in several important ways. For example, Firefox users are slightly more likely to be male (55 percent) than Internet Explorer users (50 percent).

In addition, compared to IE users, Firefox users more likely to have annual household incomes of at least $75,000.

Firefox users are significantly younger: They are 69 percent more likely than IE users to be between the ages of 18-24.

In summary, Firefox users are younger than the average Internet user, are 26 percent more likely to have incomes above $75,000, and also have a higher likelihood of being male. Interestingly, they are 13 percent more likely to have broadband connections. This leads us to the second part of this topic, which I will post soon, which will address how Firefox users are early-adopters of Web 2.0 technologies. I will also describe Firefox users based on their ‘cognographic’ profile, which is comScore’s proprietary measure of users’ interests, passions and lifestyles.

Please subscribe to our RSS feed to be updated with part two.

The Digital Battleground: Obama vs. Romney

webmaster@comscore.com (Ferry Gijzel) — Mon, 16 Jul 2012 16:03:00 +0000

Search Activity as a Proxy for Candidate Interest?
Search volume can be a good starting point for gauging the public’s appetite for information on a new contending candidate -- in this case, Romney. This is because the number of searches for a sitting President will heavily reflect the news of the day in addition to election-based interest.

Using comScore Search Planner, we can compare the number of searches for “Obama” in April 2008 to “Romney” searches in April 2012 to see the Obama searches outdistance Romney searches by almost a factor of 5x (5.14 million vs. 1.16 million). However, we might also note that in April 2008 Obama was still locked in a fierce primary battle with Senator Hillary Clinton and he was very much a newcomer on the scene, whereas Romney had his own 2008 run for President and the public may have more familiarity with him already. Interestingly, Obama searchers in 2008 skewed under age 35, while Romney searchers tend to skew age 45+.

Paid Search Marketing Can Attract Swing Voters
Paid search offers an excellent way to deliver targeted messages to potential voters and donors. People who search on a candidate’s name just may be a swing voter actively pursuing information on their November ballot choices.

Both the Obama and Romney campaigns are investing in paid search, but the Obama camp maintains a healthy lead in both historical volume and current impression levels. The chart below from comScore Ad Metrix shows that BarackObama.com is delivering 3x the number of paid search ads as MittRomney.com (7.5 million vs. 2.4 million). The Romney campaign has gradually been stepping up its investment since late last year, but Obama’s consistent past investment combined with the clear increase in 2012 investment demonstrates a strong belief in the power and influence of paid search marketing as an campaign tool.

Display Advertising Reaching High Volumes in 2012 Election
Display advertising has also emerged as an important media vehicle in the digital battleground. Well-crafted ad copy combined with effective audience targeting can help the campaigns disseminate their campaign messages, get incremental reach, brand-build, engage supporters and attract online fundraising. While both Obama and Romney are investing in paid search, their 3x differential is not that staggering. Display advertising, however, has been a different story.

comScore Ad Metrix data shows that the Romney campaign delivered 26 million impressions, mostly on Facebook, in April 2012. In the ad below, the Romney campaign also appears to be trying to fuel their social media operation by attracting Facebook fans (“Click Like to stand with Mitt.”)

While 26 million impressions in one month is certainly notable, it pales in comparison to
the Obama campaign’s 865 million impressions delivered across hundreds of sites – a difference of 33x. Among the Obama campaign’s most popular use of creative features Michelle, which is understandable given her overall high approval ratings and popularity among women – sure to be a key voter bloc in this year’s election.

Digital Campaign Operations Will Continue to Evolve
Political candidates have campaigned and advertised since the outset of organized elections, but with the emergence of each new medium comes an evolving set of opportunities for communicating with the voting public. Digital is providing a fast, dynamic and increasingly influential battleground for political campaigns, and in many ways both sides are still figuring a lot of it out. It will be interesting to see how sophisticated the respective campaign operations become as election season progresses, and whether or not their effective – or ineffective – use of the medium ends up making a difference in the outcome of the election. We’ll be sure to know more by November…

When the Cookie Crumbles

webmaster@comscore.com (Ferry Gijzel) — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 12:45:48 +0000

To a large extent, brands are investing in digital advertising based on the results of research showing that online ad campaigns can increase both online and retail sales in a very cost-effective manner. Let’s take, for example, the results of almost 100 comScore studies that measured the impact of FMCG online ad campaigns on retail (i.e. in-store) sales. These show that five out of every six FMCG online campaign generated a positive offline sales lift, with a median in-store sales lift of 21% among households exposed to the digital advertising campaigns compared to households not exposed to the campaigns. Further comScore analysis has shown that one of the main reasons digital advertising works so well for FMCG brands is that more than 40% of the campaign ads include price and promotion incentives (e.g. communication of special prices, discount coupons, price packs, etc.), which have been proven to lift sales quickly when included in other media.

As the industry continues to study digital advertising and we learn more about how online advertising works, there’s been an increasing focus on what I believe to be an essential and foundational part of effective digital media, and one that can generate even stronger sales results. That is, the measurement and validation of the accurate delivery of digital campaigns. I find this aspect of digital advertising to be critical because, if executed correctly, it can allow for even more precise and efficient targeting of ads than is possible with traditional media. Let’s take a closer look at why this is true.

During the early days of digital advertising, it was assumed that display campaigns were generally delivered on target. After all, this was part of the great promise of the Internet as an advertising channel. As branding dollars began to move online, however, advertisers sought third-party validation of their campaign delivery. They wanted answers to critical campaign delivery questions, such as: Are my ads reaching the intended demographic and geographic segments? Are my R/F levels in line with my buying guidelines?

Many advertisers were surprised to learn that, because of the way targeted ads are delivered online, their campaigns were often not reaching their target to the extent they believed. There is one main culprit for this, and that is, the cookie. The cookie is a piece of computer code that is placed on a computer’s browser when the user visits a particular website or performs a certain online activity (e.g. configuring a new car or providing demographic information, etc.). Cookies are also deposited each time a computer receives an ad as part of a specific campaign. The cookie uniquely identifies the computer and browser. In digital ad targeting, the cookie is used by ad servers in an attempt to identify the demographic or behavioral characteristics of the individual using the computer and the number of times the ad server should deliver an ad impression to each computer it sees.

It all sounds straightforward, but there are two main problems with relying solely on a cookie-based approach, and these problems have been illuminated via research from comScore (and other third-party measurement providers). Using comScore’s global research panel of 2 million Internet users who have given comScore explicit permission to install measurement software on their computers, comScore is able to continuously measure browsing activity, with an accurate measurement of individuals’ gender and age, as well as the number of times users receive an ad impression. Using comScore’s technology means this information can be obtained without having to rely on cookies.

To better understand the potential flaws of cookie-based targeting and reporting, comScore first studied the incidence of multiple-user computers and found that about 66% of Internet users are, in fact, on multiple-user machines. This means that using a cookie to identify the demographic profile of a user (as explained above) can be subject to substantial error, and thus can negatively impact the accuracy of one’s targeting. Take for example, a household with three users – a husband, a wife and their daughter. Because each of these three people use the same computer, the cookie cannot differentiate who is on the computer at any given point in time, and the ad server might deliver an ad that is intended to reach the male head-of-house to his daughter. When reporting delivery, the ad server would count the impression as one delivered against the male target, when, in fact, it was never seen by this individual and was instead “wasted” on his daughter.

In an actual example from a recent ad campaign shown below, we see what happens as a result of the inherent flaws of cookie-based targeting. The ad server is clearly unable to accurately identify the demographic characteristics of the users on the machines at the point in time that it delivered the ads.

comScore research also uncovered that about 30% of computers have their ad-server cookies deleted in a month, with a frequency of 4+ times per month. This can cause substantial error in the planned delivery of campaign’s reach and frequency. Take, for example, a campaign in which an ad server repeatedly delivers ads to a computer that has had its cookies deleted, believing that it is delivering the ad for the first time, when, in fact, the computer has received the ad multiple times throughout the course of the campaign. This typically causes an over-delivery of frequency and a corresponding under-delivery of reach.

Here is a real-life case example of this very scenario:

Using the comScore panel to measure the true delivery of this digital campaign for a client, comScore found that 65% of all impressions were delivered by the ad server with a frequency of 10+ per person, far exceeding the optimal level of 3 to 8 that the media plan required. Because of high cookie-deletion rates, the ad server kept delivering impressions to the same computers, believing that they had not previously received ads, when they actually had. Because the cookies were deleted, however, the technical evidence of the delivery was erased.

So, how should the digital ad industry address these issues to improve the accuracy of its targeting efforts? At a recent meeting of the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), Aaron Fetters, associate director of Global Digital Strategy and Analytics for the Kellogg’s Company, outlined how Kellogg’s has attacked the problem. To eliminate measurement skews associated with multiple-user computers and cookie deletion, Kellogg’s tags its ads with a comScore tag, allowing comScore to receive information about the ad delivery. comScore then uses this information, along with its panel, to truly understand who is receiving an ad (i.e. the actual person, not just the cookie) and at what frequency. This information is then fed to Kellogg’s and its ad agency in almost real time so that on-the-fly modifications can be made to the media plan, as needed. These modifications can involve shifting ad dollars from publishers who are unable to accurately reach the target segment with the desired frequency to those who can. By receiving this daily data throughout the duration of the campaign, advertisers no longer have to wait until the end of the campaign to understand the accuracy of their delivery. Instead, they can course-correct throughout the campaign, helping to eliminate wasted ad impressions and to avoid post-campaign ‘make goods’ (as is common with television advertising). According to Kellogg’s, this approach to measuring and validating ad delivery has delivered value in terms of both improved effectiveness and efficiency of their digital campaigns.

As digital advertising continues to evolve to reach its true potential as the most effective and efficient advertising medium, it is increasingly clear that ad delivery measurement and validation is a critical part of the advertising process. By leveraging the inherent ability of the Internet to deliver more ad impressions to a target segment in a given period of time than is possible with traditional media and by relying on third-party sources to verify accurate delivery, digital advertisers will be able to reap additional benefits in terms of even higher returns from their investments in digital advertising.

This article was originally published in the June 2012 issue of Admap magazine. Reproduced with permission of Admap, the world’s primary source of strategies for effective advertising, marketing and research. To subscribe visit www.warc.com/admap. © Copyright Admap.

5 Years Later: A Look Back at the Rise of the iPhone

webmaster@comscore.com (Wesley Jonker) — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 10:52:47 +0000

In July 2007, barely 9 million Americans owned a smartphone – representing just 4 percent of the entire mobile market. Today nearly 110 million Americans own a smartphone and by the end of the year smartphone owners will become the new mobile majority in the U.S.

Today, iOS ranks as the second largest smartphone platform in the U.S. after Android, commanding 31.9 percent share of the market with its 35.1 million iPhone owners in May according to comScore MobiLens. During the last five years, Apple has introduced five different versions of the iPhone and extended its reach beyond AT&T to other major carriers, including Verizon and Sprint. A more detailed look at the iPhone ecosystem by device generation found that nearly 3 in every 4 iPhone owners currently uses the iPhone 4 or iPhone 4S, with the iPhone 4 accounting for the largest overall share at nearly 40 percent of iOS smartphones in May 2012. The original iPhone released on June 29, 2007 now accounts for just 2 percent of current iOS smartphone owners, with new generations of the device making the original virtually obsolete.

As with many consumer electronics products, early adopters of the iPhone skewed male, young to middle age and wealthier than the average consumer. In 2007, 61 percent of iPhone owners were male, more than half were between the ages of 25-44 and 48 percent had a household income of $100,000 or greater.

As the iPhone reached critical mass and gained wider consumer adoption – supported in part by the introduction of new device generations, lower price points, availability through more wireless carriers and a general consumer movement toward smartphone adoption – iPhone owners, too, have evolved. In May 2012, females accounted for a much more prominent share of iPhone owners at 47 percent vs. 53 percent males. Though people age 25-44 still represent a strong percentage of the iPhone user base at 46 percent, the youngest and oldest age segments have witnessed the largest increases in overall share. And while those earning $100,000 and greater still command a hefty portion of the audience, users with income levels of $50,000-$75,000 represented the fastest growing audience income segment, now accounting for nearly 1 in every 5 iPhone owners.

The smartphone market, with the iPhone at the center of it, has witnessed incredible growth and evolution over the last five years, creating a strong foundation for the rise of the mobile media consumer and creating value for players across the ecosystem. With consumer adoption on the rise and the continued integration of new, innovative technologies, we can only imagine what the next five years will bring. But despite how quickly leadership positions can change in this market, something tells me that iPhone will still be blazing new trails into the future...

'The Power of Like 2' Offers New Insights into How Social Marketing Delivers ROI

webmaster@comscore.com (Ferry Gijzel) — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 16:00:00 +0000

comScore, in collaboration with Facebook, today released The Power of Like 2: How Social Marketing Works, the second research report in a series examining the ways in which brands can quantify the paid and earned effects of their social marketing programs on Facebook and optimize their efforts. The report leverages data on earned media exposure from the comScore Social Essentials™ product, and ad effectiveness data from comScore AdEffx™.

For too long, brands’ focus on Fan acquisition as a primary indicator of success has ignored the ways in which social marketing actually works to achieve marketing objectives like reach, brand resonance, and ultimately sales. By understanding the core elements of maximizing reach on Facebook – Fan Reach, Engagement, and Amplification – brands can benchmark their performance against other brands and devise strategies to improve on these dimensions and deliver measurable social marketing ROI.

One example from the white paper illustrates these effects for Starbucks, one of the largest and most influential brands in the social media universe. Our research analyzed the effects of Starbucks earned media exposure on Facebook and the lift in Starbucks in-store purchase incidence in the four weeks following exposure. The results showed a statistically significant positive lift in purchase incidence in each of the four weeks following exposure, and an increasing cumulative lift during those time periods.

Why are these findings so significant? First, they provide quantifiable evidence that earned media exposure can be valuable in influencing consumer behavior – and specifically the sort of behaviors that brands most want to induce, such as purchase. Secondly, they demonstrate that there is a latent branding effect that continues to drive increasing lift in purchase behavior weeks following exposure. Both of these conclusions provide more evidence that Facebook can be very valuable as a branding medium.

In addition to looking at how earned media drives purchase frequency, the research also examines how paid Facebook media impacts sales. A comScore AdEffx study of a large retailer in this paper examines the effects of exposure to Facebook Premium Ads on in-store and online purchase behavior. The result is a significant lift in purchase incidence due to advertising exposure.

These and other learnings from the white paper help shed new light on how social marketing actually works. Facebook represents a massive marketing platform with unique characteristics, including the ability to combine the effects of paid and earned media, but much of its value is still being unearthed. The Power of Like 2 takes another important step on this path to greater understanding, so that brands may begin to make more informed decisions about how to allocate and optimize their marketing mix.

Only through continued quantification, analysis and exploration will brands truly begin to realize the power of like.

Instagram for Video: Searching for the Next Big Thing

webmaster@comscore.com (Ferry Gijzel) — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 06:44:44 +0000

This post contains excerpts from Eli's original story published at SearchEngineWatch on 5/22/2012

Facebook’s IPO last month was a major milestone event for the social media industry and while there may be ups and downs on the stock price, its rising tide has the ancillary benefit of lifting all other boats in the social media space.

Instagram is the biggest story as of late, with its lofty $1 billion acquisition by Facebook. For a 3-year old company with no profits, it’s an eye-popping number -- but one of its core value propositions is passionate usage via mobile devices. Mobile is quickly becoming the next frontier in social: the average person spends more time on favorite social networks on mobile devices than on PCs.

While Instagram did not invent social photo sharing, it did reinvent the experience and help it resonate on an emotional level among users by capturing a certain style --even nostalgia -- with its various photo treatments. Given Instagram’s success, the tech community is on the lookout for a similar evolution in social video-sharing.

Most of us are probably familiar with social video sharing, even if we don’t recognize all of the services rapidly entering this space. The main ones popping up in my Facebook Newsfeed of late are Socialcam, Viddy, and Chill. The simple apps can be downloaded to your smartphone, and you can go from recording a video, to editing it with cool music and a retro look, to posting it to your social media feeds instantaneously. It’s no surprise that many of these catchy videos are quickly going viral—like the scuba diver-meets-shark example below.

Based on how ubiquitous these services have become almost overnight, we can expect the venture capital money will flow in and some leading internet companies might explore acquisition.

As we saw with Instagram, establishing a leadership position is critical. If your offering is somewhat similar to others (think Hipstamtic to Instagram), then which metrics are most important? While active users are the ultimate test, in the gold rush days of a new market it’s critical to acquire potential users, making app downloads and registered users especially important. Although you can always increase your user base organically, there is no substitute for press and celebrity adoption to drive huge spikes in interest. If you’ve ever wondered why public figures get paid thousands of dollars for product-related tweets, or PR professionals fall all over themselves to get a write up in the right publication, the Socialcam and Viddy search data should answer your question.

Prior to April 2012, there was almost no discernible search interest in Socialcam or Viddy. But then Facebook announced its Instragram acquisition on April 9th, pushing every reporter and pundit to speculate about the next billion-dollar startup. It took about 5 minutes before stories on Gizmodo, NYTimes, and CNET popped up about Socialcam, and you can see the impact that media attention had on branded search volume for “Socialcam” according to Search Planner data:

Although Socialcam got the most of the post-Instagram press, Viddy benefited from direct celebrity investment and even indirect endorsement. The largest spike in search activity coincided with major celebrities announcing that they were investing in Viddy, including Shakira and Jay-Z, as well as an indirect endorsement by Mark Zuckerberg signing up for the service and posting a video of his dog, Beast.

Search offers a strong reflection of the media and cultural buzz that surrounds ‘the next big thing.’ And while search can help direct new users to these services, whether or not they fulfill that promise has much more to do with the quality of the experience and meeting the needs of the customer. So, will SocialCam or Viddy be the one eventually anointed the Instagram of Video? Only time – and search – will tell.

For more search insights from comScore Media Evangelist Eli Goodman, check out Search Strategies for Smartphones vs Tablets and Social SEO: How to Optimize your Social Presence for Search.

It’s Time to Change the Discussion on Measuring Facebook Effectiveness

webmaster@comscore.com (Ferry Gijzel) — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 13:54:57 +0000

comScore is preparing to publish new findings about the effectiveness of paid and earned media exposure on Facebook next week at the ARF Audience Measurement 7.0 conference in New York, along with our release of a new white paper, The Power of Like 2: How Social Marketing Works. Through our research, which examines the impact on consumer behavior as a result of media exposure (i.e. seeing a brand message), we are gaining critical new insights that show Facebook earned media is having a statistically significant positive lift on people’s purchasing of a brand.

Our research uses a test vs. control methodology to compare the behavior, such as brand site engagement and purchase, of similar groups of individuals with their primary difference being whether or not they were exposed to a media impression. For brand advertisers, this methodology has been commonly used over the years to measure branding effects of advertising due to the realization that clicks are a weak indicator of true campaign performance because they ignore the importance of simply viewing an advertising message (otherwise known as the ‘view-through’ impact of exposure). The lifts in behavior as a result of exposure may be immediate or latent, often occurring weeks or even months following exposure.

We are excited to share the new results of this research because we think it will help shed new light on how Facebook marketing really works.

Unfortunately much of the recent discussion on Facebook effectiveness has gotten the story wrong. Case in point, a Reuters headline earlier this week said that said “Facebook Comments, Ads Don't Sway Most Users: Poll”, and the article cited a stat that “four out of five Facebook users have never bought a product or service as a result of advertising or comments on the social network site.”

In this particular case, it appears that the research method used was a survey, which asked users about whether or not they had ever been influenced to purchase as a result of exposure on Facebook. While surveys can be useful in assessing ad effectiveness lifts across attitudinal dimensions such as brand awareness, favorability and purchase intent, people tend not to provide very accurate assessments of their own behavior. And their accuracy in recalling their own behavior over an extended period of time can be especially unreliable. People might be able to accurately tell you how many times they have eaten at a restaurant in the past week, but they would probably do a poor job estimating that number over the past three months.

This inability to accurately recall past behavior also seems to be evident in another survey response where a higher percentage of Facebook users say they are spending less time on the site today vs. six months ago. comScore’s behavioral measurement of engagement, where time spent on sites is electronically and passively observed, indicates the opposite – that time spent per user is actually up a few percent in that period. In the case of the internet, people spend time doing dozens if not hundreds of things online each day. It is highly unlikely that their recall of the exact sites they visited, the amount of time they spent there or their specific exposure to brand messages will be closely aligned with what actually happened.

More importantly, people generally don’t like to believe that advertising actually has an effect on their behavior, even though time and time again various forms of advertising research have shown that it does. So, how people respond to a question asking whether or not Facebook advertising (or any other advertising for that matter) has affected their purchase behavior may end up having little correlation with their actual behavior.

It’s time to advance this discussion of marketing and advertising effectiveness, but doing so requires that the debate centers on meaningful measurement approaches, not on self-reported recollection. The Power of Like 2 will present some new ways for thinking about effectiveness research in the social channel. Stay tuned to find out more next week.

Facebook: Around the World in 800 Days

webmaster@comscore.com (Wesley Jonker) — Thu, 17 May 2012 17:34:43 +0000

Over the last few years social networking has emerged as a truly global phenomenon, and today Facebook is known to be the favourite site of young and old across many countries around the world. The numbers speak for themselves: in March 2012, 806 million people age15+ visited Facebook.com on a worldwide basis.

In March 2007, social networks had a global audience of less than 500 million visitors, representing just 56 percent of the world’s online population. In those days, as Thomas Friedman put it, ‘Twitter’ was a sound, the ‘cloud’ was in the sky, ‘4G’ was the name of a parking space... and ‘Skype’ for most people was a typo.” Email reigned supreme as the king of communication channels online, and the word ‘friend’ was just beginning its metamorphosis from the rigid uni-dimensional noun it was to the ubiquitous, transformative verb it has become. Since then, the digital landscape has changed immensely. Social networks, which provide platforms for online users to connect, share, and build relationships with others online, have forever altered the lives of individuals, communities and societies all over the world. The growth in popularity of social networking has also created and engendered new online consumer behaviours.

Facebook has been at the forefront of the social media movement and quickly amassing users across regions and countries, helping friendships transcend borders despite any cultural differences. Local competitors often struggled to keep users engaged and prevent internet users from ‘testing’ Facebook as the world’s largest social network spread its tentacles. The more users it attracted, the more incentive existing users had to engage and participate, helping forge a strong ‘network effect’ which today makes it very difficult to for users to leave. The switching costs for the average user have become too great. With more global users continuing to join Facebook against minimal churn, it’s no surprise that Facebook now has a billion users in its sights.

Over the past 27 months, or roughly 800 days, Facebook has overtaken local competitors in 8 additional markets and is now the most popular social networking site in 39 out of the 44 countries on which comScore reports individually. Only China, Japan, Russia, South Korea and Vietnam have different market leaders in terms of audience size.

Interestingly, 3 out of these 5 countries rank among the fastest growing global markets for Facebook. In Vietnam, Facebook increased its user base by 270 percent over the past year, while it grew 84 percent in Japan and 78 percent in South Korea.

In countries where Facebook’s user growth has matured, such as the US, additional growth in usage continues to come from new devices such as smartphones. The Facebook mobile app ranked within the top five apps on both iOS and Android, securing the #3 spot among iPhone users (80 percent reach) and the #5 position with Android users (69 percent reach).

For many of us, Facebook is part of the fabric of modern life – not just in one country – but around the world. So far it is the only truly global social network and there are no immediate signs of change on the horizon.

Social Media Delivers Valuable Exposure for Presidential Campaigns

webmaster@comscore.com (Wesley Jonker) — Thu, 10 May 2012 10:37:01 +0000

In case you missed it, comScore recently released a report entitled The Digital Politico: 5 Ways Digital Media is Shaping the 2012 Presidential Election. The report analyzes key digital campaign elements that have impacted the primaries, with an eye to how these will affect the general election.

Among the key themes discussed in the report is social media. Social media’s ubiquity and rise in popularity in recent years have largely contributed to shaping a more social environment online – not just among friends, but also between brands and consumers as well as candidates and voters. Today, social media has become an integral part of the political media landscape, growing as a primary channel for campaigns to reach out to their constituents, provide open lines of communication, and weigh in on the issues of the day (when they can’t get on TV, of course).

Through social media, a wider group of voters have found a way of more actively engaging in political discussion, debates, and issue advocacy. Whereas people may once have gathered in small groups to share their political opinions, they are now able to do the same with a broader number of people online by simply writing a post and clicking a link to share these with friends. As a result, in addition to and in some cases in place of the political conversations that typically take place in small groups around office watercoolers, similar conversations now take place on people’s Facebook timelines and Twitter feeds, giving birth to the “digital watercooler.” The true power of the “digital watercooler,” however, is the ability to amplify these debates – which used to occur between a few people – to dozens or even hundreds of people in one’s social networks.

Beyond merely engaging a core base of supporters, however, campaigns have also found value in social media as a means for reaching a broader prospective audience. Although social media continues to evolve as an advertising channel, a comScore analysis of both the Republican and Democratic social strategies to date demonstrates how and why it needs to be considered along with each of the other more established media channels. Like other mass media, social media has the ability to reach an audience and deliver an impression with the ability to persuade a voter’s opinion and compel them to act. What has not traditionally been understood is the scale at which social media can reach prospective audiences and how it may actually influence the behavior of those reached. The following data reveal how campaigns can capitalize on ‘earned’ media impressions through Facebook that can be similar in scale – and in some cases much larger – than the number of impressions delivered by their paid display ad campaigns. Earned impressions are defined as advertising messages people pass on to their friends and associates via social networks, functioning as bonus advertising providing additional exposures at no added cost.

While the Obama campaign delivered nearly 800 million paid display ads in January – a significant number on its own – it leveraged Obama’s 25 million Facebook fans to deliver nearly 66 million additional earned impressions virally. On the Republican side, Ron Paul more than doubled his paid media presence with earned impressions, while Romney received half as many impressions and Santorum nearly matched his paid total. In other words, the Obama campaign generated more free advertising by fans spreading ad messages virally than the sum total of all the paid advertising of all the Republican candidates.

It is fair to say that on sheer volume of exposure, the Obama campaign is far outpacing Republicans in leveraging social media. On the other hand, if we look at the virality ratio (ratio of paid to earned impressions) Ron Paul clearly won that race by getting more than twice as many free exposures than the number he paid for. If one were to apply the average online display ad CPM (cost per thousand impressions) of $3, then the 30 million earned impressions received by the Ron Paul campaign were worth nearly $100,000 in advertising in one month. Because messages endorsed by friends can in some cases be more likely to persuade the thoughts and feelings of those exposed, the value of these viral impressions may be far greater than the initial estimate. The digital lesson there is that a compelling ad will indeed travel, amplifying the candidate’s message and value of the online dollars spent. It is well worth the time and effort for campaigns to understand the degree to which the message resonates with fans before running the campaign.

An analysis of the frequency of exposures across candidates is also insightful. On average, each paid exposure to a fan results in 0.68 of an exposure to a friend of that fan. This further demonstrates the unique capabilities of social media in engaging a broader mix of users. Gingrich ads stood out as an exception to the general pattern in that they managed to expose friends of fans more often than his actual fans. Even though Gingrich had a much smaller base of fans, this suggests those fans were passing those messages onto their friends at an unusually high rate of frequency.

This illustration highlights how social media effectively serves as a channel for campaigns to generate a word-of-mouth effect among supporters, broadening the reach of their campaign messages at a fraction of what it would normally cost to do so on other platforms.

Another important component of a campaign’s social media presence is to understand which audiences they are reaching. One might assume that those who visit the campaign’s website or who become fans of a given candidate are likely to be engaged constituents and supporters. While that may certainly be the case, our data also suggest that these two groups may be very different audiences in reality. For example, 57 percent of visitors to BarackObama.com are age 45 and older, compared to just 22 percent of his Facebook fans. Overall, his social audience skews younger than the audience he reaches via his website. Mitt Romney, on the other hand, shows the opposite pattern. Although he has not yet amassed an audience that is anywhere near President Obama’s, the audience he is reaching through social means actually skews older than the audience that visits his website.

Such marked differences suggest that campaign operations must understand who their audience is for each media and design their strategies accordingly. As we conclude the primary portion of the 2012 election season and Mitt Romney assumes the role of the Republican nominee, we’ll be keeping an eye on both the Obama and Romney campaigns to see how they continue to leverage social media and what effect their social strategies will ultimately have on their campaigns.

Despite its Declining Importance for Many Display Campaigns, the Click Remains Important for Pharma Marketers

webmaster@comscore.com (Ferry Gijzel) — Tue, 08 May 2012 06:29:15 +0000

Over the years, comScore has published several studies – including one this past week – that illustrate how the click is often the wrong metric for measuring the effectiveness of online display advertising. We have also shown that simply being exposed to an online ad, even when a click does not happen, often drives meaningful lifts in site visitation, purchase behavior and other key performance metrics. These findings continue to change how success is perceived and measured in digital advertising. Just as with other media such as television, radio and print, marketers are beginning to understand that an action at the exact moment of exposure is not the only indicator of effective advertising. Accumulated exposures, even without clicks, provide value to brands that should not be discounted.

While the click is often a poor metric of success for branding campaigns, it should be noted that there are certain instances where clicks on banner ads do indeed matter. Most notably, for industries that deal heavily with direct response marketing, the click is the primary means through which the specific marketing call-to-action occurs, whether that is submitting an online quote or requesting more information about a product or service.

An industry where the click remains relevant, and one in which I spend a great deal of my time, is the pharmaceutical industry. In direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical marketing, the click is an important metric that correlates with a campaign’s ultimate success in driving patient and prospect conversions. Educating patients about a medical condition and how to treat it is not something that a banner ad or interactive ad unit can do alone, especially when one considers the amount of real estate that a drug’s accompanying safety information requires. Even a television ad faces challenges in conveying convincing and compelling information about a particular treatment in 30 to 90 seconds. Indeed, there are very few mass marketing vehicles that are as effective in educating patients about a particular treatment as a website. In our studies on pharmaceutical advertising campaigns, we have found it’s the depth of information provided on a pharmaceutical brand’s site or microsite that’s a key determinant of success in attracting and converting patients.

But what is among the more important drivers of traffic to these sites? The answer: clicks on display banner ads.

In the past six years, comScore has chronicled the correlation between various pharmaceutical ad campaign elements and conversions. We have found that, more than any other digital marketing tactic, getting condition sufferers to a brand’s website drives more visits to a doctor, more discussions about conditions and the brand, and ultimately more prescriptions. Overall, the best thing a banner ad campaign, interactive or not, can do to support this endeavor is to drive traffic to a dedicated site or microsite. That action is directly captured by our old acquaintance, the click.

This is not to say that our other research on lifts to be gained from simple exposures do not apply to the pharmaceutical industry. Banners also provide view-through value (although perhaps to a lesser extent) in increasing brand awareness and favorability. Users who might not click on banner ads may nevertheless end up on a pharmaceutical site by recalling the ads they’ve seen and searching for the brands that they saw or typing brand URLs directly into their browsers. However, direct-to-consumer marketing in the pharmaceutical industry just happens to be able to leverage the click differently, since clicks coming from ad campaigns can drive branded site visitation and site conversions. For pharma, banner ad campaigns are very important contributors of traffic to brand websites because they typically appear at targeted sites, whose visitors are likely to be seeking more information about a condition or treatment. In a sense, these pharma banner ads perform somewhat like search ads in that they are directed to a more qualified audience. The ad the audience sees is usually limited to an invitation to visit a site or microsite to learn more about the brand, since a good portion of the ad is taken up by federally mandated safety information. The only way to obtain the detailed information necessary to influence condition sufferers to take the necessary actions that ultimately lead to having a physician prescribe a treatment is to visit a branded website.

So while the amount of traffic that goes to a branded drug site from a click is relatively small, it is highly qualified traffic. As a result, while the click on a banner ad may not be an appropriate metric for many industries, it remains an important measure of ad effectiveness for the pharma industry.