“Yeah I’m in this business of terror, Got a handful of stacks better grab an umbrella.”
Ok, so you saw the light a few years ago and, rather than being a One-Trick SEO Pony, you began rounding out your knowledge of all the online audience building skillsets. Your inner spammer is strong, but that Armani shirt now drapes you softly.
Instead of aiming for $100/day in Adsense, you now have hundreds of thousands (if not millions and millions) of monthly visitors coming into your portfolio of web properties. And, even though you thank God (or your deity of choice) every night for this amazing life on the web, you know there is more.
It can’t end now, right? There has to be another Goliath for this army of former “SEO” David’s to take down to Chinatown. What is the final step in going from newly-minted Web Millionaire to Hamptons- or Montecito-ballin’ billionaire?
I’m here to tell you I’ve found it, this final level in the Legends of Zelda-like world of audience valuations. The last mile of the Yellow Brick Road of Internet Advertising is ComScore Optimization.
I’m not going to say how prevalent it is or throw anyone under the bus, but I would tell you that the people I know doing it now could be doing a lot more if they knew what we, as Competitive Internet Dudes (and Dudettes), know about affecting a methodology or algorithm.
As I spoke to friends at large media companies, newspapers, ad networks, and other Internet Blue Chips, I suddenly realized that the old SEO sales line of, “Spend an hour with me and you could grow another 30%”, pales in comparison to the kind of wholesale manipulation that potentially resides in Comscore Optimization. I mean, one only needs to look as far back as the Glam Media nonsense to realize how big a rather undisciplined campaign could go.
This is one of those things, for a variety of reasons, we will not be discussing in granular detail. But, at a high level, we know this:
a) ComScore has a panel of about two million users globally. Time to dust off your Global Audience Emulation playbooks, y’all. I’d recommend skipping straight to the chapter on “Showing Google As Many Unique User Signals As Possible” and just replace “Google” with “ComScore”. Like boxing or trying to steal candybars out of vending machines (ok, who didn’t try this as a kid?), you want to be the guy with the longest “reach”.
b) ComScore is heavily weighted to metrics that support its primary users…Ad Agencies and Media Buyers. Anyone who has spent five minutes with anyone from those two worlds knows exactly what metrics to influence.
With many M&A due diligence cycles and ad buys so quickly and heavily weighted towards what ComScore says about you, you can no longer ignore this. So you…big-time domain portfolio owner, competitive webmaster, ad network owner, traffic-trader, or even arbitrager…what are you doing to optimize your ComScore profile?
I leave you with what the kids are calling, “The YouTube” (uhh, if you don’t like bad words and stuff, this might not be the video for you):
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2 Responses to “Making It Rain With ComScore Optimization”
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Why not hide from ComScore instead? If you stay under the radar, less people will try to jump on your gravy train. If you manipulate ComScore to report you’re more successful than you actually are, wouldn’t other competitive webmasters start targeting your niche?
I guess you could hide from ComScore until you become entrenched in your niche and then blast them so you are reported as a great place to advertise based on the ComScore audience and readership reports.
Manipulating ComScore might be a good idea for people whose audience primarily uses Firefox or Opera because they only measures usage of IE and typically reports almost no audience at all for geek or technology related websites.
Dave,
I think this is well beyond emulating a higher presence in a niche. I’m talking about mainstream, large audiences where jumping a ComScore ranking could add millions to the underlying value of your media asset.
I suppose there is a middle range where we see instances like the Techcrunch Effect. As Mike made the jump from “Techwhat” to “The Guy”, his audience went from Profitable Niche to Metric Shitload of Ad Inventory. Emulating the strongest ComScore presence as possible could still mean easier ad sales cycles and higher premiums at that level.
Lastly, you only want to emulate a position of plausible strength…not blow it out of the water like Glam.
Oh, and your browser point is spot on.
Thanks for the comment.
BP