Campaign Ratings From ComScore Offer Cross-Platform Measurement

Will Campaign Ratings solve the ad industry's cross-screen measurement problem? Today, ComScore announced that it's partnering with several major players to create a system just for cross-screen measurement. Called Campaign Ratings, it's a way for brands and publishers to get unduplicated measurements of cross-screen viewers.

Campaign Ratings will launch in beta in September, and will be used by ABC, CBS, CNN, Disney, Fox, Freeform, GroupM, NBCUniversal, The CW Network, Turner, and Viacom. Using streaming measurements driven by Hulu, it will offer buyers and sellers unduplicated measurements across linear TV, OTT, desktop, and mobile.

There's a measurement gap in online advertising, explains Bryan Wiener, ComScore's CEO, and that prevents media brands from demonstrating the value of their viewers, and it stops advertisers from measuring how effective their campaigns are.

"We've built this product based on the specific pain points of our customers and looking forward to partnering with some of the most innovative minds in media to launch and iterate on Campaign Ratings in the months ahead," says Felix Hansen, vice president of product management at ComScore. "From a product standpoint, this is a perfect example of our passion for marrying the customer voice with our unique product and tech capabilities to deliver solutions that help move the needle for our partners' businesses."

Besides providing an unduplicated view of cross-screen viewers, Campaign Ratings will deliver person-level reach, audience demographics, and co-viewing insights.

In its recent "State of OTT" report, ComScore found that two-thirds of OTT viewers also watch linear TV, demonstrating the need for unduplicated cross-platform measurements. When OTT is counted, the number of linear TV viewers can increase by 20 percent, and when desktop and mobile is added the total can grow by 42 percent, according on one ComScore case study.

"This is a critical effort, not for the future of television, but for its present," said Bryson Gordon, executive vice president of advanced advertising at Viacom. "Closing the cross-platform measurement gap, that once intractable market challenge, with innovation across the industry like the ComScore Campaign Ratings pilot and OpenAP's platform for advanced advertising will help to propel the industry's transformation towards new currencies, products, and consumer experiences."

ComScore calls Campaign Ratings the first step in creating comprehensive unduplicated measures for all platforms.

Troy Dreier's article first appeared on OnlineVideo.net