Measurement must focus on man as well as machine

Publishers will always try to game the system, but meaningful web audience measurement needs to represent actual user experience, said comScore EVP Will Hodgman. In town for ad:tech, Hodgman (pictured) said that local debate about some digital publishers’ practice of auto-refreshing to inflate traffic stats mirrors the problem with pop ups in the late 90s.

“There was a raging debate over whether they counted as legitimate websites because the traffic was huge. In terms of gaming the system, from a measurement standpoint, it’s technology applied to what people do and exactly what people do, not what machines show to people,” Hodgman said.

“The challenge in measurement is trying to represent the user experience, trying to get down to the person and not the machine.”

The leading web measurement and analytics company has traditionally used a user panel system to measure web use, while other companies use a log system to capture server data. comScore recently announced that its Media Metrix 360 system, which combines both panel and server data, will be available to clients in the Asia Pacific region. Hodgman says that it has taken over a decade for the industry to get to a point where both methods of measurement are acknowledged as valid.

“The log data’s going to get you raw streams and counts, and the panel data’s trying to get you a people perspective. The question’s been, can you put these things together in such a way that you’re still representing people? What Media Metrix 360’s about is capturing the universe of people who have access to the web, regardless of device,” he said.

It’s particularly important to look beyond the home-based panel data in this region, Hodgman said, considering the amount of net café and public wifi use in Asia. “Outside of Australia … that’s where most people are accessing the internet. From an advertiser and agency standpoint, these are eyeballs, and they should be reported so people like us, Nielsen, HitWise, it’s our obligation to report on what the total universe is, and we’re doing that.”

Hodgman led a session on day one of ad:tech on investing in mobile marketing and advertising for the long term. He said that every year, gradual progressions increase the advertising opportunity but we’re yet to reach a point were mobile is a serious contender.

“We all say it’s the year of the mobile – it’s like Christmas, it’s always coming, but it never arrives,” he said. Two things affecting mobile consumption and advertising is the complexity of the device, how they have become easier and better to use, and the network. He also added that mobile needs a complex and robust measurement standard before it matures as an advertising medium.

“Roger Enrico, the CEO of PepsiCo way back when, he had this stupid idea, this insight that if you get more soda into the hands of consumers, they drink more soda. It led to the 1 litre bottle. It’s the same thing with technology and particularly these handsets. If you can get more power, at a reasonable price, in a consumer’s hands they do more stuff.”

But for Hodgman, the future lies beyond the handset or the net café or the tv screen. The next challenge facing the measurement industry is correlating data across channels to get a single view of how individuals consume media.

“I think within 5 or 10 years from now, our clients aren’t going to care about platform, they’re not going to care about phone, they’re not going tv and household, they’re going to care about the person and consumption,” he said.