Evening The Score With Comscore CEO Bill Livek

Nielsen’s recent missteps have been Comscore’s opportunity to make hay. At the height of the pandemic, Nielsen identified an unlikely trend that the amount of time American adults spent with media while stuck at home had actually declined. But Comscore’s data told quite a different story, says CEO Bill Livek on this week’s episode.

When it came to light that Nielsen had undercounted audiences because it was unable to service its People Meter devices during the lockdown, Comscore was right there to throw shade at traditional panel-based measurement.

During the pandemic, “it was fairly logical that you would see an increase in viewing because we were spending 24 hours a day inside our homes,” Livek says.

Comscore, which measures using return path data from set-top boxes, smart TVs and other connected devices, saw an increase in viewing in all markets and across all types of consumption, from local newscasts to streaming and serial dramas.

“When we saw things that were counterintuitive, we pointed to a very simple thing,” Livek says. “Samples don’t work well – and they also don’t work well when you have a problem maintaining them.”

Also in this episode: Making the case for big data sets, Comscore’s push to be used as a currency during next year’s upfronts and Livek on Nielsen’s patent lawsuit against alternative panel providers TVision and HyphaMetrics.

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