Grounded In Reality

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UPDATE:

comScore responds (Techmeme, official press release)

“As part of our efforts to achieve transparency, we have opened our methodology and processes to an evaluation by the Advertising Research Foundation.  We are in the final stages of this evaluation and hope that the results will be publicly released in the near future.”

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The Interactive Advertising Bureau sent an open letter to comScore, Inc. and Nielsen/NetRatings on Friday asking them to submit to an outside audit.  Highlights below:

The discrepancies exist between the audience measurements of comScore and NNR and those of the server logs of the IAB’s own members. Further compounding these differences are the disparities between comScore’s and NNR’s own measurement results. All measurement companies that report audience metrics have a material impact on interactive marketing and decision-making. Therefore, transparency into these methodologies is critical to maintaining advertisers’ confidence in interactive, particularly now, as marketers allocate more budget to the platform.

“To persist in using panels that potentially undercount or ignore the diverse populations that are the future of consumer marketing is to deny marketers the insights they need to build their businesses,” writes IAB President and CEO Randall Rothenberg in an open letter to Magid M. Abraham, the President and CEO of comScore, Inc., and William Pulver, the President and CEO Nielsen//NetRatings. “And it certainly appears to us as if these audiences are being undercounted or disregarded.”