Monetizing the Full Value of the Consumer for Brands and Publishers with Major Social Audiences
- October 26, 2023
Greg Dale
Greg Dale
Chief Operating Officer
Comscore

Social platforms have the ability to move an audience through the holistic purchase funnel – from awareness all the way through conversion and beyond.

Starting with finding out about a brand on an Instagram or TikTok post, to swiping through and purchasing, consumers can learn, engage, and shop from a brand – in a few steps from a single platform and device. If they do move across screens at any other time, they normally don’t think about the transition. It means marketers must find their audiences where they are and how they are consuming content to optimize their digital channels and drive purchase decisions.

In weighing the opportunity of social-only audiences, marketers should consider that in September 2023, more than 139B minutes were spent on Facebook, Instagram, and X (formerly Twitter) apps alone in the U.S., according to Comscore MMX Multi-Platform data.

To help brands and publishers gain a deeper understanding of their audience across desktop, mobile, and social platforms, Comscore has introduced Social Incremental to its flagship digital solution, MMX Multi-Platform to empower our clients to understand the value of their social audiences as part of their planning process. One of the standout differentiators of this innovation compared to other solutions in market is its ability to deduplicate at the person level. With this release, Comscore is redefining the landscape of audience measurement.

Our goal is to unify and modernize measurement for the cross-screen world, and our methodology enables us to deliver unique, deduplicated audience reach metrics that now include social. This new enhancement to our digital dataset allows publishers to capture and monetize the full value of their audience across total digital and brands + agencies to plan cross-platform campaigns with precision.

We want to help both publishers and agencies understand the true deduplicated (meaning we do NOT double count someone who visits both a site and social) audience reach across desktop, mobile, and social for the most complete and clear view across the digital landscape.

Take a closer look at a few publisher examples: adding social platforms to their digital footprint made a significant impact to their total reach in September 2023. One publisher saw a robust 173% increase, another followed closely with a 124% boost, and a third publisher reported a 65% uptick, per Comscore MMX Multi-Platform.)

Brands, agencies, and publishers can determine how many of their users are engaging with their content on social media only and whether this interaction complements or overlaps with their activity on their website or mobile app. This level of insight is invaluable for optimizing their marketing efforts, reducing wasteful advertising spend, and optimizing reach.

It also enables marketers to showcase the full extent of their audience's engagement to potential partners. Whether it's a publisher demonstrating their content's reach or an advertiser emphasizing their brand's impact, MMX Multi-Platform with Social Incremental ensures they can quantify the opportunity fully.

Additionally, they can align demographics with their total digital audience. This is a significant change, enabling brands, publishers, and agencies to highlight campaign performance within specific demographic segments. It's a crucial step for those aiming to engage and convert target cohorts, allowing them to tailor messaging and strategy to optimize reach.

Drawing from recent Comscore analysis from a prominent publisher, the incorporation of social media in their campaign resulted in a notable age shift in their Total Digital Population. In this case, the mean age of their desktop and mobile audience was 52, while the mean age of their social audience was 40, representing a change of more than a decade (12 years).

Amongst publishers who have already opted in to include their social reach within MMX Multi-Platform, the mean age of their social-only audience was 6.5 years younger than their desktop and mobile visitors, showcasing that they are effectively reaching a new cohort via Facebook, Instagram and X (formerly Twitter).

In September 2023, 90% of total UVs to social media platforms across both mobile and desktop in the U.S. were on Facebook, Instagram, or X (formerly Twitter). (Comscore MMX Multi-Platform, Total Audience, September 2023, U.S.)

Social Incremental 2

Considering current industry trends such as Meta reporting a +31% growth in ad impressions year-over-year in Q3 we know that social continues to be a strong channel for driving audience reach and engagement. 2024 will be a key year for marketers to build engagement with their audiences, particularly with upcoming events such as the Paris Olympic Games and an election cycle. Making the right tools available to help them optimize their insights, planning, and measurement across channels with precision are mission critical.

Comscore’s expanded social incremental metrics within our MMX Multi-Platform suite enable both advertisers and publishers to obtain a more holistic view of audiences across desktop, mobile, and social so that they can maximize reach across total digital.

Learn more about Social Incremental by getting in touch with our team.

Sourcing: https://investor.fb.com/investor-news/press-release-details/2023/Meta-Reports-Fourth-Quarter-and-Full-Year-2022-Results/default.aspx