Comscore Announces Beta Release of MMX® Multi-Platform, Providing a Unified View ofWeb, Smartphone and Tablet Audiences

MMX Multi-Platform is a Revolutionary Digital Audience Measurement and Media Planning Product that Accurately Accounts for Today’s Fragmented Media Environment

New Rankings, New Metrics, New View of the Digital World

RESTON, VA, November 29, 2012 – Comscore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today announced the U.S. Beta release of MMX® Multi-Platform, the next generation of digital audience measurement and media planning. Building on MMX, Mobile Metrix and Video Metrix from Comscore’s Audience Analytics suite, this revolutionary product offers unduplicated accounting of audience size and demographics that reflects today’s multi-platform digital media environment, which includes websites, apps and video content accessed from multiple devices.

“We are excited to introduce our Beta version of MMX Multi-Platform, the next generation in digital audience measurement offering a unified 360-degree view of digital consumer behavior across platforms and content types,” said Jeff Hackett, executive vice president of Comscore. “With smartphones and tablets accounting for a rapidly expanding share of digital media consumption, Comscore recognized the need to evolve our industry-leading audience measurement product to better represent this new paradigm. By developing proprietary methods to account for multi-platform audience overlap, we have designed a truly unique and innovative solution.”

MMX Multi-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.

A New View of the Digital World

Multi-platform digital audience measurement has significant implications for how the digital world is seen and understood. “As an active investor in mobile and web businesses, I have been dying for an accurate consolidated view of web, mobile web, iOS, and Android audience data. Comscore has delivered exactly what I've been seeking for the U.S. audience and I am looking forward to seeing them tackle the global audience next,” said Fred Wilson, Managing Partner of Union Square Ventures.

The most notable change from traditional MMX rankings are the overall audience increases for media properties with a measurable mobile presence; in some cases, these increases are substantial. Specifically, the MMX Multi Platform view shows 10 properties reaching 100 million unique visitors compared to six in a non-multi-platform view, 28 properties reaching 50 million (vs. 19), 77 properties reaching 25 million (vs. 51), 223 reaching 10 million (vs. 171) and 410 reaching 5 million (vs. 334)

MMX Multi-Platform Beta vs. MMX: Audience Threshold Comparison
September 2012
Total U.S. (Age 18+ on iOS, Android and RIM platforms for Mobile)
Source: MMX Multi-Platform

Audience Size
(Unique Visitors / Viewers)

# of Properties with Specified Audience Size

MMX

MMX
Multi-Platform

100 Million

6

10

50 Million

19

28

25 Million

51

77

10 Million

171

223

5 Million

334

410

Another visible 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 realize strong increases in total audience size and rankings under MMX Multi-Platform reporting.

Below is a comparison of the top 30 media properties in September 2012 according to the new MMX Multi-Platform Beta rankings compared to the existing MMX ranking of top web properties. These properties reached an average incremental audience of 26 percent compared to their desktop computer-only audience. Other key findings include:

  • Google Sites ranked #1 was the only property to surpass 100 million unique visitors across both desktop and mobile channels.
  • Facebook moved up one spot to #3 in the multi-platform rankings, and ranked as the top property in terms of total engagement in the mobile channel.
  • Amazon, eBay and Walmart each reached at least 20 percent more visitors across platforms than via desktop alone.
  • The most mobile-centric property in the ranking, Pandora, had an incremental reach of 164 percent and captured the #23 ranking, a full 38 positions higher than in the standard MMX ranking.
  • Twitter reached an incremental mobile audience of 54 percent, second only to Pandora on this list.
  • ESPN had the second biggest jump in the rankings, ascending 4 positions to #19, with an incremental mobile audience of 36 percent.

MMX Multi-Platform Top 30 Properties
September 2012
Total U.S. (Age 18+ on iOS, Android and RIM platforms for Mobile)
Source: MMX Multi-Platform

Unique Visitors/Viewers (000)

MMX Multi-Platform Rank

MMX Rank

Total Digital Population

Desktop

Mobile

Total Internet : Total Audience

234,953

219,970

126,890

1

1

Google Sites

214,806

189,588

109,099

2

3

Yahoo! Sites

189,272

164,404

94,304

3

4

Facebook.com

179,411

151,122

91,502

4

2

Microsoft Sites

170,565

168,022

41,837

5

5

AOL, Inc.

135,860

120,936

52,400

6

6

Amazon Sites

134,522

111,170

61,844

7

7

Wikimedia Foundation Sites

103,724

88,441

39,444

8

8

Glam Media

102,288

86,884

39,749

9

10

Apple Inc.

102,065

79,689

47,567

10

9

CBS Interactive

100,698

86,998

36,662

11

11

Turner Digital

98,711

84,649

36,996

12

12

Ask Network

91,011

78,023

31,618

13

14

eBay

90,289

73,805

37,537

14

13

Demand Media

89,894

78,214

30,003

15

15

New York Times Digital

88,284

71,671

36,401

16

18

Comcast NBCUniversal

83,105

70,031

31,135

17

17

Federated Media Publishing

81,923

68,846

30,071

18

16

Viacom Digital

79,410

71,610

20,313

19

23

ESPN

65,486

47,345

31,818

20

24

Weather Channel, The

63,268

46,930

28,878

21

20

Gannett Sites

61,514

49,499

24,140

22

22

Answers.com Sites

60,228

48,828

22,760

23

61

Pandora.com

59,877

22,657

48,641

24

19

VEVO

57,716

55,033

4,966

25

20

craigslist, inc.

57,442

49,601

16,657

26

27

Twitter.com

56,736

36,840

30,646

27

34

Disney Online

51,938

44,508

14,470

28

25

Wal-Mart

51,469

41,515

18,643

29

30

Yelp.com

47,920

33,385

23,021

30

26

Linkedin

47,064

39,600

13,639

*Note: Desktop includes audience reached via video and will therefore differ from standard MMX rankings; Mobile includes smartphone and tablet platforms

Methodology & Metrics

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 utilize 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 MMX 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.

Tag Your Digital Content Today!

MMX Multi-Platform Beta is available to U.S. clients immediately, and anticipated for introduction to the UK market in early 2013. Other international markets will follow thereafter. Publishers, brands, and media companies who want to ensure that all their digital platforms and audiences are fully reflected in MMX® Multi-Platform are strongly encouraged to begin tagging their digital assets with Comscore today at the Comscore Direct website.

Many web sites are already familiar with the process from tagging their traditional web content using Comscore’s UDM census tag. The Comscore tag has recently been updated to enable advanced measurement of sites and apps in a fixed web or mobile environment, inclusive of both iOS and Android platforms. With an increasing amount of media consumption shifting to smartphones and tablets, now is the time to make sure that all of your digital assets are accounted for:

  • Traditional web pages
  • Mobile-optimized web pages
  • Mobile apps
  • Tablet apps
  • Video content

If you have any questions about implementing these additional tags, please feel free to reach out to your Comscore account representative.

About Comscore
Comscore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR) is a global leader in measuring the digital world and preferred source of digital business analytics. For more information, please visit www.Comscore.com.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements
This release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, including, but not limited to, expectations regarding the impact and benefits to Comscore from the MMX family of products, financial or otherwise. These statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause our actual results to differ materially, including, but not limited to: the features and characteristics of the products, the rate of development of the digital marketing intelligence, Internet advertising and e-Commerce markets; the growth of the Internet as a medium for commerce, content, advertising and communications; and the acceptance of new products and methodologies by the industry, including existing and prospective clients.

For a detailed discussion of these and other risk factors, please refer to Comscore's most recent respective Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q, Annual Reports on Form 10-K and from time to time other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC"), which are available on the SEC's Web site ( http://www.sec.gov).

Stockholders of Comscore are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date such statements are made. Comscore does not undertake any obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statements to reflect events, circumstances or new information after the date of this press release, or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events.

Press
Bill Daddi
Daddi Brand Communications
646-370-1341
press@comscore.com

Multi-Platform Content Measurement

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