Laying the Foundation
comScore, Inc. was founded in August 1999 by Dr. Magid Abraham and Gian Fulgoni. Prior to comScore, Dr. Abraham served as the president and Mr. Fulgoni as the CEO of Information Resources, Inc. (IRI), one of the world’s largest market research companies.
Together, they founded comScore with the objective of creating the first service to measure trends in e-commerce. At the time, no market research company measured online buying behavior. The two leading online measurement companies, Media Metrix and Nielsen NetRatings, were focused solely on tracking Internet users’ site visitation behavior, providing their clients with basic metrics on the size and demographic characteristics of site audiences.
The panels these two companies used numbered in the tens of thousands. This was far too small a sample size to accurately measure e-commerce since, on average, only 5 percent of a site’s visitors converted into buyers in any month. A panel of at least a million people would be needed. That was a daunting challenge because no research company had ever built a panel of 100,000 people, let alone a million. However, since their experience at IRI had shown that marketers spend four times as many research dollars measuring consumers’ buying behavior as they spend measuring media ratings, Magid and Gian were confident that an attractive market existed for online browsing and buying information. They decided to take on the challenge by raising and willingly investing tens of millions of dollars to discover ways in which to successfully recruit millions of opt-in panelists and develop the technology needed to capture, warehouse and analyze massive quantities of online data.
The infrastructure and business applications that comScore has developed have overcome numerous technical challenges and met industry needs through:
- Innovative, cost-effective panel recruitment methods
- A scalable data capture technology
- Industry-specific analytical applications that deliver deep insight and improved marketing ROI
The result is an unprecedented ability to understand Internet users’ online behavior – with a level of accuracy that helps marketers to make smarter business decisions. comScore’s initial U.S. database was completed in December 2000 and the company’s services commercially launched in January 2001.
Acquisitions Along the Way
By 2002, Media Metrix, the leading Internet audience measurement firm at the time, had expanded too far and too fast, and when the Internet bubble burst, the company found itself unable to raise additional capital. Several firms made overtures to acquire Media Metrix, but it was comScore that eventually prevailed. The acquisition of Media Metrix by comScore was formally announced in June 2002. The first and most important step following the transaction was to replace the Media Metrix measurement approach with comScore’s industry-leading technology and to increase the size of the Media Metrix sample. This was accomplished by the comScore technology team in a matter of a few months, creating a breakthrough measurement capability that was enthusiastically embraced by Media Metrix’s clients. Today, comScore’s syndicated audience measurement services are marketed under the comScore Media Metrix brand name, and have become the industry’s leading source of online media intelligence. A prominent industry survey conducted by the investment firm William Blair & Company rated comScore as the industry’s most preferred audience measurement service – beating the nearest competitor by a margin of 25%.
Several other strategic acquisitions have also been completed along the way as comScore has grown into a market leader. In 2004 and 2005, comScore acquired Q2 Brand Intelligence and Survey Site, both leading providers of custom survey research and consulting services to Fortune 1000 companies.
In 2008, using proceeds from its successful IPO, comScore completed the strategic acquisition of M:Metrics, the leading mobile measurement firm, expanding its portfolio of products and services to encompass the fast-emerging mobile media space.
Track Record of Innovation in Digital Media Measurement
By leveraging its scalable technology and data infrastructure, comScore has been able to confront the challenges of rapidly-changing digital measurement needs and attack them with vigor. If there is something in the digital environment that needs to be measured, comScore can figure out a way to do it.
Over the years, this “can do” attitude and culture of innovation has resulted in comScore consistently breaking new ground in digital measurement. comScore’s history is marked by the creation of breakthrough measurement services representing the first of their kind in the digital world. Among the areas of digital marketing that comScore was first to measure are e-commerce (2001), search (2002), ad networks (2005), global Internet audience measurement (2005), online video (2005), widgets (2007) and mobile Internet browsing (2007).
comScore Global Expansion
In recent years, comScore has broadened the size and scope of its global operations. In early 2007, the company expanded its international headquarters in London, and opened satellite offices in Paris and Tokyo. It also upgraded to new and improved office space in several U.S. locations, including New York, San Francisco, Chicago and Seattle, and cut the ribbon on its new global headquarters in Reston in June 2008.
Coinciding with its rapid expansion, comScore announced in June 2007 its initial public offering of common stock on the NASDAQ stock exchange under the ticker symbol “SCOR,” raising the capital needed to fund the company’s aggressive expansion plans.
August 2009 marks the ten year anniversary of comScore’s founding, as the company looks forward to its second decade of unparalleled innovation in measuring the digital world.
