Agencies Know the Score on Web Tracking
ComScore's Bust On Google Clicks Is Hardly a Surprise
A discrepancy between Google click data and comScore's estimates of those data before they were released caused the Web-measurement firm's share price to plunge last week. But on Madison Avenue, the difference wasn't much of a shock. Rather, it was another reminder that the science of tracking Internet usage is still far from perfect.
Digital-advertising executives say they have long taken comScore numbers with a grain of salt and don't plan on curtailing their use of the Reston, Va., research firm because of the Google flap. "We have not expected the numbers to be 100% accurate," says Sarah Fay, chief executive of both Carat and Isobar US, ad companies owned by Aegis Group. "I think that comScore has been as good as anything we've had previously."
Marketers rely heavily on comScore and the other major Web-measurement company, Nielsen Online, when trying to decide how to spend their online ad dollars. Advertisers study their data -- including a Web site's total visitors or page views and time spent on the site -- to try to determine which sites are popular among particular demographic groups or in certain topic areas, such as news or sports. They typically compare those data with a Web site's own figures.
Both Web-measurement companies have gaps in their research. Because they use panels of Web users to gather data and then extrapolate, the results are estimates. And both companies lack the capacity to measure total international audiences.
The companies are trying to address those shortcomings by looking for ways to increase the size and depth of their panels, investing in technology and expanding overseas. Nielsen Online, which is owned by the audience-measurement firm Nielsen, also is trying to combine its Web research with usage data from other media, such as mobile-phone and television measures.
To complicate matters, disparities between comScore and Nielsen data are common, as the two companies use different methodologies to measure their audience panels. For instance, according to comScore Media Metrix, Yahoo's finance site received 15.8 million unique U.S. visitors in March. According to Nielsen Online, the site received 20.2 million unique U.S. visitors during that period.
"There is no truth on the Internet, but you have two companies vying to say they are the truth of the Internet, and they disagree," says Brad Bortner, an analyst with Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester Research.
In its earnings report Thursday, Google said consumer clicks on its advertisements in the first quarter increased 20% from a year earlier. Earlier in the week, comScore had estimated 1.8% growth in U.S. clicks from a year earlier. ComScore's stock dropped more than 8% in after-hours trading Thursday. Friday, comScore shares closed down 1.7%, or 40 cents, to $23.18.
ComScore points out that Google's and comScore's numbers aren't an apples-to-apples comparison and says that explains the discrepancy. ComScore tallied only U.S. clicks and excluded Google's nonsearch ads. Google's own numbers were overall, world-wide figures.
"We anticipated that Google's revenues would do better than what our paid-click data were interpreted to imply," says comScore CEO Magid Abraham. "We are always concerned about maintaining our reputation and want to be as accurate as possible."
The syndicated data from comScore and Nielsen are used by media buyers as a research tool -- but not to determine how much advertisers pay. The pricing is calculated by outside ad-serving firms, such as Google's DoubleClick, that track the performance of ad campaigns for such measures as how many times an ad is clicked or viewed.
"We are not going to look at comScore to determine the effectiveness of Google. We are going to look at our own campaign-performance measures," says Sean Muzzy, senior partner and media director at Neo@Ogilvy, a digital ad agency owned by WPP Group's Ogilvy & Mather.
Even though they are fully aware of the holes in comScore's and Nielsen's data, media buyers sometimes put more weight in them than they probably should. "When time is really pressed, or when the complications are overwhelming, the temptation has got to be that media buyers take them more seriously than any of us should," says Sarah Chubb, president of CondéNet, the digital division of magazine publisher Condé Nast.
The reliability of third-party Web-measurement data has been a hot topic in the online media world for some time. About a year ago, the Interactive Advertising Bureau, a trade group that includes more than 375 Web publishers, asked comScore and Nielsen to submit to an outside audit to find out why the two companies report such different measurements for the same Web sites. The measurement firms are in the midst of completing those audits, which are expected to continue through the year and detail the differences between their panels and methodologies.
By: Emily Steel
Wall Street Journal; April 21, 2008
