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 – comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, 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 and MMX |
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| 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 and MMX |
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| 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 | 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.
