Today, comScore announced the acquisition of the products division of mobile network analytics provider Nexius, Inc., called the Xplore product suite. I want to offer a few thoughts on why we are so excited about this news.

At comScore, we have a long history of providing customized solutions for key industry verticals, such as media companies, advertisers, CPG and financial services. In recent years, telecommunications companies – and the wireless operators in particular – have been an important source of growth for us. In the U.S. alone, the wireless industry represents more than $150 billion in annual revenue, a number that has tripled over the past decade. It is a massive market that is poised for continued expansion.

However, wireless operators all over the world face a fiercely competitive and highly fluid environment. There are a host of infrastructure challenges that vary by country, and they must deal in real-time with a broad set of technical, performance and customer-facing challenges to secure their fair share of this growth. The explosion of voice and data usage in the last several years has resulted in internal data challenges that are orders of magnitude greater than what they were just 3 years ago. Tools that enable network performance metrics that can be used by management to make better decisions about network expansion and to monitor and respond to customer experience are tantamount. Once acquired, keeping customers is the name of the game.

This is where the Nexius Xplore solution comes in. This offering consists of an innovative suite of analytical products that provide the mission critical insights needed to help mobile operators compete in these areas. Products built on the Xplore platform enable network operators to manage the influx of data, and use it to enhance operational efficiencies and reduce customer churn.

This acquisition represents an important phase in the series of steps comScore has undertaken to deliver value to this key industry vertical. Our 2008 acquisition of M:Metrics gave us the ability to measure mobile media usage and other mobile consumer dynamics, providing us with a front row seat for the emergence of this rapidly developing medium. Our recent partnership with the GSMA in the U.K. has provided us with key insights and understanding of the operators at a census level. The acquisition of the Nexius Xplore platform now allows us to deepen our relationships with operators even further and engage with them internally at the network level to help them solve some of their most important data management, analytical, and CRM challenges. We are confident that this acquisition will strengthen comScore’s position in the mobile marketplace through expanded product offerings.

Operationally, this acquisition presents several areas of synergy. First, comScore has the ability to leverage its global footprint to scale the Xplore product suite across its existing international markets. In addition, the Nexius Xplore team also has international offices in the Middle East and Eastern Europe that will enable comScore to expand existing services into new international markets.

We also see this acquisition as a strong cultural fit, with both companies possessing a similar DNA as entrepreneurial companies known for their technological leadership and spirit of innovation. Bringing Xplore into the comScore tent will enable us to provide an even broader set of solutions and resources to help our clients measure the changing dynamics of the wireless ecosystem. Foremost among these resources is the exceptional talent Nexius brings with them. Nabil Taleb (Nexius CEO) will join the comScore senior management team and will be named EVP of comScore Wireless Solutions, bringing with him a team of wireless industry veterans that understand the needs and challenges of network operators.

On behalf of the entire comScore team, we welcome the Nexius Xplore team and look forward to the continued growth of our wireless business.

World Cup interest continued to intensify around the globe through the end of June. Traffic to FIFA.com reached a global high on Tuesday, June 22 as the end of group play revealed which teams would advance to the next round. More than 8.7 million people visited the official World Cup destination that day, representing 1.3% of the entire global Internet audience.

Interest in the World Cup, using visitation to FIFA.com as a proxy, grew significantly across each global region during the month of June. Latin America posted the strongest regional penetration relative to the rest of the world at 6.5% for the week ending June 27, followed by the Middle East – Africa at 5.6%. Europe reached 3.8% penetration, followed by North America at 2.9% and Asia Pacific at 1.6%.

An analysis of the 40+ individual countries currently reported by comScore showed that countries in South America showed the strongest relative visitation to FIFA.com for the week ending June 27. Chile had the highest market penetration with nearly 11% of online users in the country visiting FIFA.com during the week, followed by Argentina at 9.2%. Even without teams in the tournament, Colombia and Venezuela both posted penetration levels above 9%. World Cup host country South Africa ranked fifth at 8.3%, while Portugal had the highest penetration among European markets at 7.5%. New Zealand topped the list for the Asia-Pacific region at 7.3 percent with their June 24 match against Paraguay driving New Zealanders to the site. The U.S. witnessed a 2.4-percent reach (its highest weekly penetration of the entire World Cup) as it topped Algeria to advance to the next round of play.

For continued coverage of Internet trends throughout the 2010 World Cup, visit the comScore Voices blog or @comscore for additional updates.

I am extremely excited to share with you our announcement from earlier today that comScore has just introduced Video Metrix 2.0, the next generation of our industry leading online video measurement product. comScore was the first company to introduce online video measurement about 5 years ago and to say that the online video landscape has changed since that time would be an understatement! YouTube was still barely a blip on the video radar and Hulu wasn’t even a figment of someone’s imagination…

But here we are today, 5 years later, and online video has become a massive media channel in its own right. 180 million people in the U.S. watch online video for an average of 13 hours each month. And what was once a huge repository of primarily user-generated content video has now evolved to become a secondary (or in some cases, primary) channel for viewing professionally produced long form content like movies and TV episodes. In a recent study about the interplay between TV and online viewing of TV programming, we learned that online video typically adds an incremental 6% to the size of a TV audience for original scripted programming. That incremental viewing audience is even greater among 18-24 year olds (13%) and 25-39 year olds (9%).

As online video has evolved, so too has its ability to monetize through advertising. When we first began measuring this medium, video ads were virtually non-existent but today they account for about 12% of the total number of videos viewed online. As this shift occurred, comScore recognized it was time to rethink the way we were measuring online video in a way that not only accounted for ads and monetization rates, but also in a way that makes online video more directly comparable with TV.

So with Video Metrix 2.0, you are going to see a different look in how we present this data to better conform to the new web video paradigm. Among the innovations available are the ability to segment between online video content and ads, several new reporting metrics to better evaluate video ads and their reach and engagement within video audiences, and TV-show level reporting. Our new ad reporting will also help advertisers understand which of the sites featuring predominantly long-format content are monetizing most successfully and reaching audiences with video ads throughout their programming. Below is a view of the average number of video ads delivered over the course of June to viewers on the site:

We will also have the ability to provide show-level reporting for the major TV broadcast sites. Below are the June rankings of top shows being viewed online ranked by number of viewers for ABC.com, CBS.com and NBC.com. (Please note that these figures represent viewing during TV’s summer hiatus, and online audiences should surge as fresh episodes hit the air this fall.)

We hope you are as excited about these enhancements as we are, and we look forward to continuing to bringing you the most detailed, accurate and innovative online video measurement in the industry!

Note: Video ads include streaming video-advertising only and do not include other types of video monetization, such as overlays, branded players, matching banner ads, homepage ads, etc.

Last week we notified Yahoo! of a processing error confined to data specific to Yahoo! which resulted in under-reporting Yahoo! Page Views and duration metrics by 2 to 3%. This morning, Yahoo! made an announcement about the revised data. The purpose of this blog is to provide some more insight on how we implement data corrections in the rare occasions that they occur and shed some light on this particular issue.

Our standard policy over the last 10 years has been to publish data corrections within our client notification center in the My Metrix section of the comScore web site. When a client data error is discovered after the data for the month is officially published, we investigate the root cause, recalculate the affected metrics and report our findings to the client for review. Once we are satisfied that the revised metrics are correct, we post them in the Client Notification Center, an equivalent of software ‘release notes’ that compile any known issues for the month. Clients can use the postings to report the corrected metrics in internal and external communications.

The Yahoo! case is a regrettable error which was the result of processing specific to Yahoo! As such, it was an isolated, one-time error that did not affect any other client’s data. In addition, no panel data metrics were affected, including data reported on Yahoo!. After a thorough review, we have identified a process to prevent similar occurrences in the future.

I am proud to say Yahoo! has always been a valued partner to comScore. We have consistently worked together to bring valuable and innovative research to the industry and will continue to do so. While we obviously regret error, we appreciate the comments that Carol Bartz, Yahoo!’s CEO made regarding Yahoo!’s continued confidence in comScore data, and its willingness to work with us in a fully cooperative spirit. We have earned this confidence through a constant commitment to deliver the highest quality, most timely and actionable information about the digital marketplace. This will only strengthen our commitment to those goals.

Linda Boland Abraham
Executive Vice President
Marketing and global development.

This post was originally published at SearchEngineWatch on July 19, 2010.

Search is a multipurpose tool with potentially unlimited uses for each of us. Whether we need to find a birthday present for Mom, find out the latest news on the World Cup, or determine the best driving route to the game, a simple query in the search box will provide us an answer. Online search has clearly evolved to become the de facto answer delivery system for our questions. Though it helps us quickly and efficiently get answers to our questions, is search actually making us any smarter?

Answers are our goal, but they inevitably lead to more questions. Think about how many times you have immediately asked “why? or how?” after your initial investigation was concluded. Prior to the Internet, we were stopped dead in our tracks time and time again without an available medium to address those follow up questions. Maybe we saw an interesting fact on Jeopardy, but short of having an encyclopedia handy or heading off to the library our options were usually pretty limited in finding the answer we were seeking. The Internet -- and search specifically -- has opened up learning opportunities that even the least intellectually curious of us is taking advantage of every day.

Currently, reference-related searches account for 13% of the total U.S. monthly search volume (over 3 billion queries). With about 2 out of every 3 U.S Internet users visiting a reference site last month, there is no question that finding answers online is important, but how considerable a role does search play in driving traffic to these sites?
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The world’s largest reference site Wikipedia.org represents one of my favorite examples of how people become smarter through search. If you have ever conducted a search, you have surely come across a Wikipedia link in that first or second position of the organic results, offering an informational response to your query (even if you didn’t ask a question). Interestingly, Wikipedia receives an astounding 90% of its inbound traffic via search! And those of us who have landed on Wikipedia after a search know how that visit frequently serves as a springboard to further navigation through Wikipedia as we inevitably learn far more about that subject than we ever intended. These follow up “why and how” questions are both answered and initiated by information we didn’t anticipate desiring at the beginning of the search.

Another example of how search educates us is the Google Doodle, “the decorative changes that are made to the Google logo to celebrate holidays, anniversaries, and the lives of famous artists and scientists.” One of the most popular Google Doodle’s was the recent celebration of PAC-MAN’s 30th anniversary.

These Doodles are designed to be interactive, such that if a searcher clicks on the image it will populate the search box with a pre-defined term and run a search when clicked.

PAC-MAN is a ubiquitous pop culture icon that perhaps offers little educational value, but Google Doodles frequently pay homage to important historical events and figures. One such subject recently highlighted by a Doodle was renowned composer Antonio Vivaldi on his birthday in March.

During an average month, Vivaldi’s name generates around 20,000 searches in the U.S., but after the Google Doodle was shown this number ballooned to 650,000 in March, an increase of more than 3000%. Or put another way, an additional 630,000 people who likely would not have otherwise searched for Vivaldi were exposed to some new information about him.

While these Google Doodles have perhaps a unique ability to drive these searches, they represent only a tiny fraction of all the new educational information to which search exposes us – both directly and indirectly – every day. Search clearly has an important role in how we gather information, become more educated, and nurture our collective curiosity and intellects. It is making that process as simple and streamlined as possible, and is most definitely making us smarter as a result.