comScore, Inc., a provider of digital business analytics services, has announced the US beta release of Media Metrix Multi-Platform, the next generation of digital audience measurement and media planning. Building on Media Metrix, Mobile Metrix and Video Metrix from comScore's Audience Analytics suite, this product is said to offer unduplicated accounting of audience size and demographics that reflects today's multi-platform digital media environment. This includes websites, apps and video content accessed from multiple devices.
The new platform is expected to remain in beta over the next several months as the product undergoes a thorough data review and validation with comScore clients. All publicly reported data included in this initial report are illustrative and should not be interpreted as official comScore rankings.
The most notable change from traditional Media Metrix rankings are the overall audience increases for media properties with a measurable mobile presence; in some cases, these increases are substantial. Another way of reflecting this change is through the ranking of the top media properties. Properties that are particularly mobile-centric, or at least have a strong mobile extension of their brands, may realise strong increases in total audience size and rankings under Media Metrix Multi-Platform reporting.
comScore's multi-platform measurement relies on its proprietary Unified Digital Measurement (UDM) methodology, which combines panel and census-based approaches, to deliver best-in-class estimates of digital audiences and consumption. In order to provide accurate unduplicated audience size estimates across digital platforms, comScore developed a proprietary method that leverages its census web site network to understand audience overlap across different media channels – the first offering of its kind to utilise such an approach. This unified representation of disparate media channels also requires a modified view of certain standard reporting metrics.
While 'unique visitor'-based metrics remain central to Media Metrix Multi-Platform, measures of engagement such as page views must be reconsidered. This means that duration-based metrics (i.e. minutes) become the preferred engagement metrics because they are consistent across media; however, comScore is also introducing the new "views" metric to account for content-specific engagements, such as the web-based page view, video view or app start.
