ComScore ‘surprised and disappointed’ at Nielsen’s IAB contract extension without a pitch
ComScore’s Weinberger
The boss of one of Nielsen’s biggest rivals to provide an online measurement service in Australia has expressed surprise at yesterday’s announcement that the Interactive Advertising Bureau is to extend the existing contract without a tender.
Two years ago Nielsen beat fellow tenderers Colmar Brunton with Gemius; ComScore; Roy Morgan Research with Effective Measure and Vizisense to the contract in a process led by then IAB CEO Paul Fisher. Fisher has since become Nielsen’s MD of media.
Yesterday’s extension for Nielsen was announced by the IAB’s research director Gai Le Roy, a previous VP of research at Nielsen Online.
Le Roy yesterday told Mumbrella that the extension was after “a thorough review” that indicated no other players would be capable of taking on the contract.
Last month Nielsen had to reissue its website news rankings after a problem with the data.
The process of extending the contract was led by interim IAB CEO Tony Prentice. Prentice was a former chairman of the IAB during his time at News Limited, a period during which he worked closely with Paul Fisher.
The contract gives the provider preferred audience measurement supplier status to the IAB’s members who include all of the major online players.
After losing out in 2011, Will Hodgman, ComScore’s international boss, told Mumbrella that his company had missed out because it did not have the same local connections as Nielsen. Pointing out that ComScore offered a hybrid measurement system – based on both site tags and an audience panel – in 43 other markets compered to Nielsen’s three, Hodgman said then: “Maybe the guys already there are not the best, but you know them. They made the expected choice. For better or worse, they went with what they knew.”
Hodgman pledged then to “go again” in the next tender round.
Today ComScore’s VP and MD for Australia and New Zealand Amy Weinberger told Mumbrella: “We are definitely surprised by the extension that the IAB has given. ComScore has continued to bring cutting edge products like advertising effectiveness and viewability to the market and will continue to do so in order to push the entire digital industry forward.
“Since the time of the initial tender, over two-and-a-half years ago, there have been major organizational changes at IAB AU. ComScore has a strong local operation in the ANZ market, so we are disappointed that we were not able to present our innovative new products to the IAB before the decision to extend.”
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Reports are companies weren’t even given the chance to show their wares to the IAB. It would be good to get an understanding of what the thorough review involved.
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IAB CEO Paul Fisher has since become Nielsen’s MD of media.
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This reflects very poorly on the IAB. They should have been aware the staff movements between IAB and Nielsen would raise eyebrows if there was no tender process. Plus its just good management to know about what suppliers can bring to the table.
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“It’s not what you know….”
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Perfect example of worst practice – can’t believe this stuff still happens, and so blatantly
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Isn’t a tender the appropriate process to test a market to see which providers can meet a set of requirements at the best possible price point?
If it looks like a fish and smells like a fish – even if it is not a fish, it gives the impression of one!
This makes it even more important to take the steps necessary to avoid a legal test of whether it was, indeed, a fish.
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Totally agree with Jay; why wouldn’t you put it out to tender? If you want the best for the industry you should have an open forum.
I’ve used comScore for several overseas markets and found the user interface to be better and quality of the data to be much higher.
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The IAB’s Measurement Council worked with interim CEO Tony Prentice to review Nielsen’s contract. In their view Nielsen still offers the best available online measurement data for the Australian market and no other audience measurement companies are in the position to take on the contract immediately.
Paul Fisher played no role in the review process or final decision.
Gai Le Roy
Director of Research
IAB
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Disappointing, particularly given the progress ComScore have made locally since 2011. Personally I think ComScore should win hands down on the basis of their UI alone… not to mention their strong coverage of international inventory.
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This is really unfortunate. I’ve used ComScore in the North American market for years and it’s extremely easy to use in comparison to Nielsen. Nielsen needs some serious adjustments in terms of the types of reports it can pull, I also find it only captures the audience of the big guys sites which Comscore could always drill down deeper into the smaller sites. Really hard to build a good plan when I can pull results for the top 5 publishers in the market….
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Commscore are streaks ahead of Nielsen. There is no contest, particularly in proper tracking of display networks and video networks. Lift your game IAB.
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