Google to partner with researchware firm comScore
The Washington Post has an article on how Google is expanding its Web reach to Madison Avenue. … The most interesting part of the article, at least to me, talks about Google's plans to team with the "researchware" fim comScore …
Context & Ripple Effects
This partnership extends a push Google began at least a year earlier, when the New York Times reported on its ambitions to dominate Madison Avenue alongside search. The comScore tie-up addresses the gap in that campaign: brand advertisers judge media by audience measurement, and Google's click-based metrics do not speak their language.
The move lands in a busy stretch for Google's advertising strategy — a $900 million deal centered on MySpace ads and the pending $1.65 billion YouTube acquisition — both of which raise the same question from agencies: who verifies what audiences Google is actually delivering?
First-order effects
- Google gains access to comScore's researchware panel data, giving it third-party audience measurement to pitch display and video inventory to Madison Avenue buyers who require it.
Second-order effects
- Established audience-measurement players serving TV and brand advertising face pressure to partner with or price against web measurement firms like comScore as agency budgets shift toward measurable online reach.
Third-order effects
- If ad dollars keep following verifiable audience data, measurement firms become gatekeepers of the brand-advertising market rather than after-the-fact auditors — a structural shift in how all media, not just search, gets bought.
The trend: Web platforms are absorbing the accountability infrastructure of traditional advertising — measurement, panels, verification — as they chase brand budgets beyond direct-response search.