It has been a good couple of months for internet analytics company comScore, in its battle with Nielsen for control of the enlarged multiple platform media measurements field. Following recent major contract wins with Viacom and Adobe, comScore has now bagged a place in Facebook’s third-party verification partner program. Facebook has also partnered with Nielsen and global media valuation platform provider Integral Ad Science.
Facebook’s video ads have come under fire for failing to deliver promised metrics, most notably from Sir Martin Sorrell, chief executive of British advertising and PR firm WPP. Sorrell blasted Facebook back in September, claiming that the 3-second rule that it uses to show ad clients that a user has shown intent to watch a video is “ludicrous”, adding that some 50% of online videos are ignored. Facebook has certainly shown its own intent in seeking to rectify these claims, by teaming up with three advertisement analytics powerhouses.
Facebook’s viewing data will be reported directly by comScore in the Ad Validation module of its validated Campaign Essentials (vCE) product – providing metrics for video and display campaigns on desktop and mobile. ComScore launched vCE back in January 2012, as a way of measuring digital ad delivery – saying that it takes a holistic view of validated impressions across an online ad campaign providing unduplicated accounting of impressions delivered across a variety of dimensions, such as ads delivered in-view, in the right geography, in a brand safe environment, and absent of fraudulent delivery.
ComScore completed its takeover of Rentrak for $732 million in February 2016, creating a cross-platform measurement portfolio for reporting on multiscreen audience behavior in more than 75 countries, with the grand objective of establishing a new consistent multiplatform currency for ad and content trading. Prior to this, it teamed up with Kantar, the research arm of WPP, in which WPP acquired 15-20% of the company and comScore bought Kantar’s audience measurement business in some select unnamed European countries.
Recently, Nielsen in the US has been losing customers to the newly merged comScore and Rentrak. Nielsen remains a far larger beast but comScore’s online reach is a crucial aspect, which now surpasses any other player, with its cross platform tools now gathering information from 120 million VoD users in 210 markets across the US, as well as 40 million TVs, totaling 1.5 trillion monthly digital interactions. ComScore also has a major win at Time Warner Cable, providing the audience measurement system for TWC’s OTT apps, in combination with Conviva Insights – giving TWC a tool to judge the effectiveness of campaigns.
We recently covered Conviva’s move into the advertising space with the launch of Ad Insights, an advertising analytics product, and Faultline met with the company at this week’s TV Connect in London. We mentioned the recent additions to Facebook’s partner program and Conviva’s CSO Keith Zubchevich expressed that he would love Conviva to be added to one day be a member of this, as social media is high up on the priority list, having won a deal with Twitter, as well as LinkedIn’s video education site Lynda.com.
Zubchevich said that Conviva moving into the ad space doesn’t put it up against the likes of Nielsen, rather that the two companies have a “budding” relationship – which involves filling in a certain “gap” in Nielsen’s data center.
Facebook has been intensifying its mobile advertising presence over the last few years, for generating revenue from users accessing aps outside its domain. In 2015, Facebook had the second highest US mobile ad revenue share at 19.4% compared to Google’s 32.9%, according to research from eMarketer. However, this is forecast to drop to 19.2% market share for Facebook in 2016, and also slip to 31.7% for Google.
“We’re excited to work with Facebook to offer our clients greater transparency into the performance of their holistic campaigns, and to provide increased confidence that their ads have the opportunity to be seen. Partnerships like these enable advertisers to mitigate wasted ad spend, encourage greater trust between buyers and sellers, and contribute to enhancing the overall value of digital advertising,” said Manish Bhatia, chief product officer at comScore.
“Independent ad verification partnerships are critical to making sure advertisers trust their ad delivery data, so they can explore exactly how to drive value for their business in feed-based platforms. We are pleased to be working with partners like comScore to provide advertisers and their agencies with data they need to do just that,” said Jonathan Lewis, product marketing manager at Facebook.