ComScore said Tuesday that it has teamed up with GroupM and several TV networks to launch a beta product called comScore Campaign Ratings this fall, which will provide advertisers with deduplicated measurements across all video platforms.
The pilot program is designed to be a consolidated metric that can accurately measure across linear, desktop, mobile and OTT.
ABC, CBS, CNN, Disney, Fox, Freeform, NBCUniversal, The CW Network, Turner, Viacom, Hulu and the WPP media buying unit GroupM have signed on to test the ratings system.
“The marketplace is demanding a currency grade solution to plan, transact and evaluate video advertising,” comScore CEO Bryan Wiener told AdExchanger. “Campaign Ratings is going to allow advertisers to understand their reach and frequency across all screens.”
Because video viewing is more fragmented than ever, it’s difficult to know which person in any given household watched an ad and how many times they watched it. The same viewer can be shown the same ad on a streaming service and on their phone, for example, frustrating both advertisers and consumers. A brand can only tell someone to get car insurance or whiten their teeth so many times before the advertisement has the opposite effect.
Although Campaign Ratings’ launch will only provide measurement based on age and gender, subsequent versions will contain the ability to do “advanced targeting,” Wiener said. This would hypothetically allow advertisers to target viewers in the market for a specific product, like a car.
“The promise of comScore is being able to bring digital targeting to TV, which we can do with our set-top box data platform,” he said.
Hulu is currently the only streaming partner on board. But Wiener said comScore will pursue other digital and OTT players in the months to come.
“Our goal by the end of the year is to have 80% coverage of all video advertising as part of this platform,” he said.
A cross-platform metric isn’t uncharted territory, and comScore is competing with Nielsen to solve for it. Nielsen’s Total Content Ratings is similarly designed to create a unified metric across platforms, but the product hasn’t had great reception. NBCUniversal’s ad sales chief Linda Yaccarino been a longtime critic of TCR.
ComScore has had to claw itself out of a rough couple of years. After being delisted by the Nasdaq in 2017, the company saw some shuffling in leadership. It has also been releasing updates to its Video Metrix OTT and mobile measurement product since 2015.
