Starcom Mediavest Group Canada (SMG Canada) has selected ComScore as its preferred partner for digital performance measurement, making it the latest media player to take a side in the increasingly heated battle between ComScore and Nielsen to dominate the online measurement marketplace.
From now on, the media agency will exclusively use ComScore’s validated Campaign Essentials (vCE) platform to measure audience reach and impact for clients’ digital campaigns.
“With access to TV-comparable effectiveness measures, like [validated Gross Rating Points, a measurement of audience reach], vCE brings a renewed confidence in display advertising and gives us greater control over our campaign planning,” said SMG Canada CEO Bruce Neve in a release. “As a result, we’re more informed on the effectiveness of every dollar invested and better equipped for future campaign planning on behalf of our clients.”
vCE is used to determine the effective in-demo reach of an online campaign, as well as other performance indicators like the percentage of digital ads that were in the target geography and were viewable by humans. ComScore’s product also provides brand-safety blocking, which assesses the environment where campaigns ads appear and automatically blocks ads to sites that the advertiser deems unsafe.
Nielsen’s competing product, Online Campaign Ratings (OCR), offers the same core functionality. It also measures online GRPs and targeted rating points, and though it does not offer features like in-geo targeting and brand safety, OCR has access to a much larger demographic panel to assess targeted ratings through its partnership with Facebook. (To read more about how ComScore’s vCE and Nielsen’s OCR stack up, see our rundown from the July issue.)
For the past year, the two measurement providers have been going head-to-head to win over media agencies, advertisers, and data providers. Nielsen’s dominance in TV campaign measurement, and close relationships with major players like Unilever, ESPN and Facebook, gave it a head start; but ComScore’s reputation as a innovator and digital native led some agencies to see it as better equipped for the nuances of online measurement.
The new deal with SMG Canada extends ComScore’s existing partnership with Publicis media agency and SMG parent company Vivaki to the Canadian market. Since May, Vivaki has worked with ComScore to integrate vCE into its SkySkraper data management platform and promote viewability as a standard metric for campaign measurement.
Meanwhile WPP’s GroupM has thrown in with Nielsen, assisting with Nielsen’s development of Cross-Screen Campaign Ratings (XCR), a campaign measurement platform that leverages Nielsen’s expertise and market dominance in TV ratings to integrate unique reach and demo data across TV and online video campaigns.
Other players, like Aegis Group’s Carat, have been ambivalent, signing on to test and compare both systems.
A key differentiator has been ComScore’s emphasis on viewability, a metric developed by the IAB to measure what proportion of purchased impressions translate into an ad on a consumer’s screen. According to the IAB’s definition, an ad is viewable if at least 50% of its pixels were on-screen for at least one second.
Nielsen has put more emphasis on making digital ratings compatible with TV ratings in order to facilitate a single cross-screen metric, and has integrated viewability into its GRPs, rather than measuring it as a separate indicator. Nielsen’s CEO David Calhoun, in a Q3 2012 earnings call, told investors, “I just don’t see [viewability] as a big differentiator in any way, shape or form – now and even less in the future.”
Speaking about the SMG Canada partnership in a release, ComScore Canada president Brent Lowe-Bernie emphasized vCE’s digital-focused approach. “Measuring digital performance is much more than producing digital ratings. The digital ecosystem and complexities of today’s marketplace demand more sophisticated approaches, data, and insights.”
