comScore Downgrades YuMe
When comScore released its U.S. ad network rankings for June last week, YuMe was at No. 8, a noteworthy feat considering the young startup serves only video ads. We thought the company breaking into the top 10 was impressive enough to post about it.
But competitors and commenters quickly cried foul, piling into our comments section and inboxes with claims that YuMe’s ranking had been unfairly counted. It received credit for the entirety of MSN’s page views despite only serving ads on a portion of Microsoft’s unsold inventory, they said.
Since then, without noting a correction, comScore has revised the rankings in its July 21 press release to place YuMe at No. 32. The company is now counted at 59 million uniques, as opposed to 134 million in the original version.
When we asked comScore for comment, the metrics firm disclosed it had made the change on Friday after deciding it had miscounted YuMe.
“Certain traffic was incorrectly attributed to the YuMe Video Network, and that misassigned traffic has since been removed from the entity,” a spokesperson said via email.
YuMe, meanwhile, said it was unfairly singled out. CEO Jayant Kadambi wrote via email:
“We’re extremely disappointed with comScore’s handling of this situation. We have made every effort to supply comScore with the documentation they requested. Instead, comScore has chosen to apply measurement rules to YuMe that are different than those they applied to every other ad network and publisher in the AdFocus report. We think comScore should revise the June AdFocus immediately, either to restore the original rankings, or to apply the same standards applied to YuMe’s measurement to all other properties in the report.”
comScore was quick to assure us that it ranks sites based on independent measurement, not that supplied by the company. I do think YuMe is in the right to ask for better industry standard measurement, but at the same time the company probably shouldn’t have made such a big deal of its high ranking by issuing a press release and so forth. What nobody’s arguing at this point is that YuMe serves ads to as many visitors as the other traditional ad networks who were in the top 10.
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[...] Replaces CEO YuMe, the video advertising network that was recently involved in controversy with comScore over just how big it is, has brought in a new CEO, according to an email from a company [...]
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[...] a deal to sell video ads on Microsoft’s unsold inventory), the web measurement firm had unceremoniously downgraded YuMe to No. 32, reordering its own press release and providing no comment on the matter until we [...]
comScore Reinstates YuMe, for Now «…
— 12:39 PM on August 15, 2008
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I agree with Jayant – there needs to be a standard measurement across the ad networks. Shouldn’t it just be # of ad impressions served to # of unique users? Another black eye for comScore.
Sure there needs to be standardization, but Frank’s suggestion isn’t the right answer.
Some networks frequency cap to protect the user experience. The better measure – reach, or potential reach, or available number of streams – are much better measures.
If one network has 250 million streams, but serves a pre-roll in front of every one, you’ve got a problem. If you have 1 billion streams, and serve an ad once in every 4 videos, you’d have the same number of ads served, but a much happier user base.
Liz, if you are correct, and they serve as many ads as those in the Top 10, then they are bombarding their users with ads. And thats not good. I’m guessing they aren’t serving anywhere close to those numbers.
Hi Thedigi, perhaps my wording was unclear. I was saying that YuMe doesn’t serve as many ads as those in the top 10.
Liz -
Thanks for the clarification. It definitely sounded like you were saying that they ‘were’ serving as many ads.
Pretty stupid move on their part overall. Why would an ad network that doesn’t sell display advertising try to compete (on numbers) in a report that has networks that sell banners? Piss poor decision making on their part, and they are upset that it is being handled properly.
More importantly, though, they STILL haven’t removed the old comScore data from their homepage. Doesn’t look like they are playing very nicely with comScore.
Oddly enough, they could have avoided the whole mess by being listed in the proper report. There is a “streams only” report, the comScore VideoMetrix report, which would accurately represent their numbers. They are just picking the wrong battle.
Where does comScore get its data? Who are these millions of people who have knowingly consented to let comScore spy on their usage? Why is nobody investigating this?
Please, thats not the issue. comScore gets its data from the publishers. They are comScore clients. The publishers know how many unique visitors they have every month. They get ad data directly from ad servers. There’s nothing to investigate. Its like counting how many people walk through a door into a store.
I do like your blog, though. I’ve been very interested in that whole space for quite a while (www.thedigitalhobo.com)
Comscore is antiquated, to say the least, and their incentives are perverse. I doubt they would have issued the retraction if ppl didnt point out the inaccuracies b/c Yume is probably paying Comscore.
It seems like yume is being disengenous in trying to make their ad network look like bigger than it actually is. Thedigi is right in that Yume is essentially counting all uniques for every publisher, even though the publisher might only have videos on 5% of their pages and only 10% of uniques see their video ads. It’s like Pepsi saying their product gets seen by every single shopper who walks into Walmart, even though Pepsi cans are only on a portion of a shelf where a small fraction of ppl see them (no offense, Pepsi). I can see why yume wants to lie about their size though. It’s a smokescreen to advertisers b/c advertisers tend to buy scale and reach first. In this case, they got burned.