Earlier today, Comscore announced a strategic alliance with WPP’s data investment management division, Kantar. The alliance establishes a framework to bring the best of breed elements from the two companies – our products, technology, data assets, research panels and relationships – together to provide world class cross-platform audience and advertising measurement capabilities to global markets.
As the data investment management arm of WPP, Kantar is one of the world's largest insight, information and consultancy groups. Kantar, whose services are employed by over half of the Fortune 500, has built a tremendous set of assets that are complementary to those that we’ve built at Comscore and offers its clients insight at every point of the consumer cycle.
Allow me to explain a bit more about our rationale behind forging this alliance.
Over the past twelve months we’ve seen an acceleration in the transformation of the video and television audience as consumers access TV and video across multiple devices, shift their viewing patterns to fit their own schedule, and increasingly do so in ways that challenge the traditional broadcast and cable television model.
Consequently, enormous opportunities are emerging for media companies and marketers who can crack the cross-media code. This global opportunity would be undermined by inadequate measurement that fails to account for all video viewing with sufficient accuracy, a concern that has been frequently voiced by industry players around the world. The solution to this complex problem requires technological innovation, deep measurement expertise, and individual country knowledge. We believe that the alliance between Comscore and Kantar delivers all of this and more. By combining Kantar’s global experience in TV and media measurement with Comscore’s existing and new measurement technologies, we will deliver a truly global solution that addresses the requirements of the entire media industry.
Strategic Alliance with a Global FootprintOur immediate focus is on combining our assets and expertise to jointly deliver cross-media audience and campaign measurement in markets outside the United States, leveraging a consistent methodology around the world.
Kantar is the leader in TV measurement outside the United States and today delivers its Television Audience Measurement services in 41 countries. Today Comscore delivers digital audience measurement services in 44 countries. Working together, we will be able to combine digital media and video with television data to deliver new cross-media capabilities and products across the globe. This alliance will help the media industry in a variety of ways, helping increase accuracy and more comprehensive measurement, including bringing services to markets where they are unavailable today and in many cases would be unattainable without our partnership. Together, we can provide the global media marketplace with accurate, reliable, and innovative measurement solutions that the industry is calling for.
Our focus here is not just on audience measurement but also on advertising campaign measurement. At Comscore we’ve been developing cross-media vCE to provide campaign-level insights across TV and digital media. The ability to measure individual campaign performance across TVs, smartphones, tablets, and desktops provides new and powerful insight to marketers. Our alliance with Kantar will catalyze and accelerate the pace of our global rollout.
Comscore will also acquire the assets of Kantar’s Internet audience measurement businesses in certain European markets. In these markets, Kantar and Comscore will continue to provide the same level of seamless integration and data services.
Together we’re embarking on multi-year journey with WPP and Kantar to deliver transformational services to a dynamic global marketplace. We’ve worked for over a year to make sure our company’s goals are aligned, and to ensure that this partnership succeeds, and that we are able to fulfill on its promise – to bring cross platform solutions to markets where these types of solutions have not been available or even attainable.
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