With the race for cross-screen audience measurement becoming more of a marathon than a sprint, under new CEO Bryan Wiener comScore has both feet in the game. Those would be its digital and television penetration and the granularity of its consumer behavior data.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe genesis behind the comScore-Rentrak merger was brilliant,\u201d Wiener says in this interview with Beet.TV. \u201cWhat we haven\u2019t done well is integrate those two platforms and provide rapid product innovation to the market, and that\u2019s really what we\u2019re doing with this resurgent comScore.\u201d<\/p>\n
At AT&T\u2019s upcoming The Relevance Conference<\/a> later this month, Wiener will participate in a panel discussion of industry executives titled The ROI of Attention. He believes the conference comes at an appropriate time.<\/p>\n \u201cI think we\u2019re at this point in time where the industry needs to evolve pretty rapidly and, one of the core elements of that is how do we measure audiences and how do we measure advertising ROI,\u201d Wiener says.<\/p>\n Wiener joined comScore in April of 2018, having been a board member since the previous fall. He was tasked with righting the comScore ship following a string of accounting crises and losses, as the Wall Street Journal reports<\/a>. In his first 60 days at comScore he had more than that number of customer meetings in which he heard \u201cover and over again\u201d the desire from buyers and sellers for reliable, third-party measurement of audiences and advertising ROI.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd that\u2019s something that the current state is not doing very well and I think that\u2019s our big opportunity.\u201d comScore has laid out \u201can aggressive road map over the next six months of launching products that are going to solve that need,\u201d says Wiener.<\/p>\n \u201cThat primary need is unduplicated reach and frequency in this cross-platform world. We\u2019re going to start with currency products, but we\u2019re going to move on to planning products.\u201d<\/p>\n To Wiener, being \u201crelevant\u201d is table stakes for convincing people to buy something. \u201cThis entire industry is based on growing marketers\u2019 business. I think people sometimes lose sight of that. At the end of the day, marketing is not about marketing. Marketing\u2019s about fueling profitable growth for marketers. If that\u2019s happening that creates a virtuous cycle for everybody in the ecosystem.\u201d<\/p>\n At the AT&T event, Wiener will be joined on stage by Scott Howe, CEO, Acxiom; Peter Naylor, SVP Ad Sales, Hulu; and Donna Speciale, President, Advertising Sales, Turner. It will be moderated by AppNexus President Michael Rubenstein.<\/p>\n