Measuring the path to purchase on many screens

With the path to purchase routinely involving multiple screens, comScore and Google have struck an agreement designed to simplify the ability of marketers to measure shopper behavior in real time.

The online measurement firm comScore already had a multiple screen measurement service known as cVE, short for validated Campaign Essentials. It provides brand marketers with campaign insights by providing an unduplicated accounting of impressions delivered across a variety of dimensions, such as ads delivered in-view, in the right geography, in a brand safe environment and absent of non-human traffic.

However, the relationship with Google means comScore’s vCE metric will be built directly into Google’s DoubleClick ad server that publishers and marketers use to deliver their ads. It will initially be available in the U.S. later this year for desktop-based display and video ads, with eventual plans to expand the service for mobile and cross-platform.

“We’re deeply committed to creating metrics that are as meaningful for brands as the click is in performance advertising, and we have a number of efforts underway to provide actionable brand measurement,” said Neal Mohan,” Google’s vp of display advertising. “To accomplish this, we’re investing in our own technologies as well as partnering with trusted industry leaders, like comScore. We look forward to working with them to give brand buyers and media sellers better access to real-time insights.”

According to comScore president Serge Matta, the partnership with Google is more than a simple technology integration.

“It allows us to radically simplify digital media buying for the industry, while enhancing quality and accountability. This directly addresses many of the everyday challenges that prevent our clients from investing further in digital,” Matta said.

To validate their claims of effectiveness and simplicity, comScore and Google served up a number of testimonials from marketers.

“What’s exciting about the comScore-Google integration is the ability to leverage real-time cross-media comparable metrics and rich demographics within a single platform. For us, this means a level of simplicity and actionability that we haven’t experienced before, and it’s something that can help move multi-channel media planning, measurement and optimization forward in a major way,” according to Jon Suarez-Davis, vp of global digital strategy and North American media at Kellogg Company.

“This is a tipping point for brand advertising in the digital realm,” said Lisa Weinstein, president of global digital, data and analytics with Starcom MediaVest Group (SMG). “As a vCE company, SMG strongly supports any effort to deliver comScore’s campaign validation on a wider scale and with more workflow efficiency, and there is no platform that can better accomplish that than DoubleClick.”

According to Scott McDonald, SVP of research at Conde Nast Publications, the move represents a commitment to transparency in digital advertising that will eliminate barriers to achieving greater scale and efficiency while rewarding content publishers who deliver on their promise of quality audiences.

“With many advertisers currently increasing their spend on display, video and mobile, it's important to have an infrastructure in place that allows them to spend with confidence,” McDonald said.