Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Publishers See Mobile Measurement Gap

Digiday reporting:
Complaining about third-party measurement in media is as old as media itself. See: carping about Nielsen ratings in TV.
On the Web, the de facto measurement standard is ComScore. For years, publishers have griped about the accuracy of the numbers, pointing out that ComScore’s panel-based measurements often differ, sometimes significantly, with their own internal figures.
Now, publishers have a new list of gripes, starting first and foremost with the problem of audiences spread across different devices. With mobile now comprising as much as 40 percent of some publishers’ traffic, it is a major issue, several publishers said. ComScore claims to be addressing this, but some publishers see it as little more than another ploy to drum up revenue.
“It’s laughably bad for us, and they still try to sell us anytime we complain or ask questions about methodology,” Erik Martin, gm of Reddit, said in an email. “They insist on using their tracking beacon, but every time we’ve tried that, it slows down our site tremendously and they have no answer.”
The ComScore multipaltform product is a synthesis of three products — media, mobile and video. Planners use ComScore to determine which publishers get on advertising plans. That means publishers have a lot to lose if their numbers are off significantly.
“ComScore doesn’t count mobile traffic, period,” said one publisher. “Add that to their normal bullshit, panel-based discrepancies, and their numbers are not based on reality.”...

...Lipsman said that ComScore does count mobile traffic, but that phone and tablet are lumped together. There’s no standalone tablet measurement yet, but publishers can see their mobile traffic in totality.
“Tablets [are] a universal concern that goes beyond ComScore,” said Brian Hughes, svp of audience analysis and practice lead at Magna Global. “It’s a huge knowledge gap in our industry right now not to have passively measured insights on what types of media are consumed on tablets and how long people spend with them. All the tablet research that exists today is based on surveys, and we are always suspect of self-reported behavior.”
http://www.digiday.com/publishers/publisher-concerns-with-comscore-multiplatform-measurement/?utm_source=Daily+Buzz+from+eMedia+Vitals&utm_campaign=19fe5df911-nl_DB_02_27_2013&utm_medium=email

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