comScore is very excited to announce today that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire AdXpose, a leader in ad verification, optimization and brand safety. Consistent with comScore’s track record of leadership and innovation, the acquisition of AdXpose, combined with comScore’s existing Campaign Essentials product, will enable the development of game-changing metrics in online advertising measurement. These new metrics offer the opportunity for more meaningful insights that will change the way the digital media industry currently buys and sells advertising.

Online GRPs: Necessary, but Not Sufficient
Recently, there has been a significant amount of discussion about the value of online GRPs, a metric that comScore has been reporting for several years. The analysis we’ve done across thousands of campaigns during that time has led us to an overwhelming conclusion: GRPs, while important and necessary in that they create a bridge to traditional media, are simply not sufficient for effectively managing the dynamics of how advertising works in the digital environment.

Consider the ad delivery process online. Unlike traditional media, as much as 80% of all online ads are delivered through third parties. As a result, the advertiser is often unaware of how, where and to whom these ads are actually delivered, which presents some significant challenges. In some cases, a portion of these ads are delivered but are not seen. In other cases, they appear alongside content that, in the advertiser’s view, would be damaging to the brand. Sometimes, within the complex multi-party hand-offs involved in delivering an ad, unscrupulous players (often unknown to other parties in the transaction) can even game the system and introduce fraud into the delivery.

Even when an ad is legitimately placed next to content that is not objectionable, it is often delivered to people who are outside the intended target, either demographically or geographically. In addition, ads may be delivered on target but at too high or too low a frequency. In the thousands of campaigns we’ve analyzed, it’s not uncommon for 25% of exposed people to see just one impression (which is typically not enough), and 25% or more of exposed people see it 10 or more times (which is typically too high). Collectively, these factors contribute to significant difficulty in achieving the objective of an advertising campaign, which is to deliver ads to the right people in the right context at the right frequency in order for advertising to have the desired impact. The current environment leads to sub-optimal campaign performance and a lot of unnecessary waste.

This reality is not good for anyone in the digital ecosystem — advertisers, publishers, agencies, ad networks, ad exchanges, etc. — and it inhibits the growth and development of the digital medium. What is needed is a way to understand the Validated GRP; in other words, a measure of impressions that were legitimately delivered to a user, in the right context, within the right frequency range, to the desired target.

Digital Media Industry Supports Need for Enhanced Transparency in Ad Measurement
It is not just comScore that has come to this conclusion about the need for Validated GRPs. Recently, the Association of National Advertisers (ANA), American Association of Advertising Agencies (AAAA), and the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) collaborated on standards to better report advertising exposure as part of their Making Measurement Make Sense (3MS) initiative. One of the core standards they suggested was to report on viewable impressions in campaign delivery and effectiveness, which would bolster confidence that ads being delivered online were properly seen. The 3MS initiative also aims to reduce the cost of doing business in digital advertising, where the proliferation of media and advertising technology suppliers has made executing a digital ad buy have a greater proportional operational cost than other media. comScore and AdXpose will reduce this complexity by providing a “single tag” solution to measure all of the metrics needed to ensure valid advertising delivery to the right audience. The single tag eliminates operational costs and reduces discrepancies for all parties in the online ecosystem.

In order for digital advertising to fulfill its potential as a strong component of the marketing mix, our industry requires greater transparency in understanding the complex dynamics of ad delivery. Enhanced measurement capabilities are needed to help proactively manage campaigns, and to take corrective actions when inefficiencies occur. comScore’s acquisition of AdXpose sets out to accomplish exactly that by integrating its unique ad validation and optimization tools into our Campaign Essentials product. While these products will initially be sold side-by-side, we are already working to combine them into a fully integrated, end-to-end solution where these metrics can all be delivered, managed and optimized in real-time, within a unified system.

In summary, we are excited about welcoming the AdXpose team and its world-class technology, and we look forward to the new value we can deliver to the industry together. Stay tuned for more developments!

comScore just released our annual U.S. Digital Year in Review report, which does a deep dive on key digital media trends of the year. 2010 was another great year for the digital media world, as we not only saw the industry claw its way back from the recession but through continued innovation it managed to expand and attract more consumer and advertising dollars to the medium.

Here are the highlights:

1. E-commerce is back, but is morphing: In total, US ecommerce grew 10% to $142.5 billion, and the 2010 shopping season delivered the first ever billion dollar shopping day -- on Cyber Monday. Price incentives and deals such as coupons, free shipping, group buying, and daily deals of all sorts continue to grow in importance, and are likely to become a permanent part of the e-commerce fabric going forward, even as economic conditions improve. So yes, online sales are alive and kicking, but deals are a big part of it.
2. Digital couponing comes alive: 2010 saw the rise of group buying and flash deal sites such as Groupon, LivingSocial and Gilt.com as heavy discounts and local offers attracted consumers across the country. The number of visitors to Groupon and LivingSocial each experienced triple digit growth (712 percent and 438 percent, respectively) as a good deal has proven too hard to resist for many Americans.
3. Facebook now leading the mindshare battle: In Q4, Facebook widened the lead it took earlier in the year vs. Google and the three major portals, and now accounts for just north of 12% of time online—and it seems to be climbing. Three out of every 10 internet sessions includes a Facebook visit, and Facebook accounts now accounts for 10% of all pageviews in the US. “Facebook” was also the top organic search phrase in 2010 with nearly 2 billion searches on that term–3 times greater than the next most searched for term. In short, it’s a behemoth--and getting bigger.
4. Web-based email is waning: Total usage of web-based email dropped 9% in 2010 with more precipitous declines occurring among younger age groups, particularly teenagers. It’s clear that communication is shifting not only to other platforms, but to other devices. (If you plan to email your kids and you want a response, be sure to send them a text and tell them, like I have to.)
5. The Search battle gets bigger and wages on: The search market grew by 12%, driven both more people searching, and existing searchers searching more. Google remains the clear leader, receiving more than 2 of every 3 searches, with Yahoo! in second at 16%. Innovations such as Google Instant and contextually driven search ended the year with Google and Microsoft making share gains of .6 share points and 1.6 share points, respectively.
6. Display ad growth continues, and more big brands join in: An all time high of 4.9 trillion display impressions were served in 2010, up 23% from last year. More than 1 in 3 was served from a social networking site; 1 trillion were on Facebook—a first for any publisher. Big brands are starting to think bigger in digital—the number of brands that served over a billion impressions was up 30%, from 80 to 104. Telco giants AT&T, Verizon and Sprint were all in the top 10 as they’ve historically been, but some of the traditional branded players such as Disney and Mastercard also stepped up significantly. Will 2011 be the year that the brand dollar floodgates open? Time will tell.
7. Video adoption continues to climb, and online TV is now mainstream: More people watched video, and those that did watched more of it. The video audience grew by 32%, and time spent grew by 12%. The average American watched 14 hours of video in December. Hulu continues to be a big story, attracting twice as much viewing as the Top 5 broadcast sites (ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and CW) combined. The proliferation of both publishers and platforms is contributing to changing behavior—creating not only more video users, but more and more ‘cord cutters’ (people who consume TV content solely online.) Based on activity in the back half of the year the rate of change is likely to continue or increase, making video an increasingly important part of the digital experience.
8. Video ad market takes shape, but still pales in comparison to TV: As a percent of online video consumption, video ads continue to climb. At year end, 16% of videos viewed were ads--a significant increase vs. 12% just six months earlier. However, as a percent of total time spent, video is still in its infancy. In TV, commercials make up 25% of viewing time; in online video, it’s just 1.6%. That suggests that while video has clearly become integral to mainstream internet usage, the video ad market is still just a whisper of what it’s likely to become.
9. Mobile market getting ‘smarter': U.S. smartphone penetration surpassed 25% in September, helping to usher in a new era of mobile media consumption. As smartphones begin to take over the mobile marketplace, behaviors like email usage, music and video consumption, and mobile commerce are beginning to emerge in a meaningful way.
10. Android vs. iPhone battle heats up: 2010 was a big year for Google Android devices with the platform now accounting for 28.7 percent of all smartphones (up 23.5 percentage points from just last year), as it bypassed Apple in the last part of the year to become the #2 smartphone operating system (RIM is still #1). With the Verizon/iPhone deal kicking off 2011, watch for competition between Google and Apple to heat up even further as they vie for the loyalty and dollars of smartphone consumers.

So go ahead, rattle off a few of these fun facts off at your next cocktail party, office get together or romantic Valentine’s dinner. (Being married to an internet guy myself, I will probably do the latter!) Better yet, if you haven’t already downloaded the entire 2010 U.S. Digital Year in Review Report, you can do so here. Clearly, in 2010, digital proved resilient, progressive, and competitive. I can’t wait to see what this year brings.

We hope you enjoy and that it gives you a few things to think about to maximize your success in 2011!

This post was originally published at Adweek on November 10, 2010.

The advertising industry is evolving at an unprecedented pace. One can imagine how the titans of 1960s Madison Avenue would marvel at the complexity, agility and creative potential of today's advertising landscape. But they would also be dismayed to see that, with digital's emergence, we have in some ways lost our roots as an industry founded on truly great creative that captured the hearts and minds of consumers.

But before tackling the issue of creative, let's take a look at what, in a way, has been holding it back.

As digital advertising enters its third decade, branding dollars continue to lag in the medium. Approximately 20 percent of people's media consumption time occurs online, yet the medium attracts just 5 percent of branding advertising dollars, according to the TVB Media Comparisons Study. This isn't entirely surprising - after all, an industry that thinks in terms of the "science" of ones and zeroes does not have a natural inclination toward valuing the "art" of the creative. It's all too easy to forget that these ones and zeroes are simplified representations of human behavior and the highly complex thoughts, feelings and emotions behind them.

And so, this measurable medium naturally tends to reduce digital advertising to impressions and clicks. Capturing the very essence of why digital has been a laggard in attracting branding dollars - the commoditization of impressions - marketing executive Wenda Millard implored advertisers to "educate one and all about the value our digital offerings provide marketers and not trade advertising space like pork bellies."

Over the years, display ads have been treated mainly as commodities. Because these "pork bellies" generated almost no click-throughs, advertisers and their agencies were reluctant to give the creative the time of day. It wasn't until a few years ago that our industry began to give credence to the importance of latent branding impact, aka the "view-through." This shift in thinking is helping to illuminate the need for considering display ads in terms of their creative elements, but it's clear that we still have a long road ahead of us.

Now that the industry has come to accept the fact that display ads actually have a latent branding impact, it's time to advance the industry into the next critical phase of its ascent. It's no longer sufficient to simply acknowledge that creative may be important in online advertising - it's time to demonstrate the value of our medium by turning online creative testing into a discipline.

Research from comScore ARS indicates the importance of creative in driving sales lift. In fact, we've found that 52 percent of sales lift variance is attributable to the quality of the advertising creative, four times the importance of the media plan. In other words, advertisers are currently assuming no control over the single most critical variable in determining sales performance.

By way of comparison, consider the amount of emphasis currently being given to the media plan. This is, of course, an important component to a successful strategy and well worth optimizing. But if the creative isn't persuasive in the first place, then what's the point? Even the most perfectly optimized media strategy cannot make a weak campaign effective.

The stakes have never been higher in the digital ad arena. Advertisers are plowing more money into the medium than ever before, with the largest individual placements - like roadblocks on large portal home pages - topping $1 million a day! With that much money on the table, one might expect advertisers to hedge these risks through testing the quality of their creative. And yet, many continue to resort to the "spray-and-pray" approach -- slapping banners up wherever they can and hoping that they work.

There truly has never been a better time to begin optimizing digital creative. As rich media gets richer, and new and interesting digital ad units emerge, advertising creatives finally have the canvas they need to develop their masterpieces. Digital also serves as an important extension of broader multimedia campaigns with the ability to effectively engage consumers and reinforce the message of the campaign. But this canvas needs to be utilized to the fullest extent possible, and not merely as an afterthought.

As advertisers begin to gear up for the all-important holiday season, the question is how many advertisers will continue to adopt this basic approach to advertising in the digital environment and how many will get smarter and start testing their creative? Those who get their creative right can amplify their effects tremendously, while those who don't will run the risk of flushing those valuable marketing dollars down the drain. It is time for advertisers to ask themselves: What would Don Draper do in a digital world?

I can vividly remember my first day at my new employer, Procter and Gamble, back in the 1980’s. I walked into Cincinnati headquarters and entered the elevator. On the ride up, I clearly recall four men in suits discussing details of a commercial they were producing for the brand to which they were all assigned - Always Sanitary Napkins. I stood in front of them in my own boring grey suit, being sure to convey proper elevator etiquette - looking up and pretending not to listen - but I couldn’t help but absorb their every word. They went on to discuss some pretty intimate details of what the product delivered and how they would convey that in the commercial. I remember thinking: “This is odd. Where are the women in this conversation?”

More than two decades later, as I’ve moved from traditional media marketing to digital media marketing at comScore, I frequently find myself asking the same question. The digital world is increasingly dominated by the thoughts, actions and intentions of women, but as I travel from meeting to meeting and conference to conference in our industry, I often find myself as one of the relatively few females in any given room.

To be clear, I’m certainly not suggesting that men are not effective at marketing to women. On the contrary, I’ve worked with some brilliant marketers who were equally effective marketing to both genders, including some of the men on that elevator on my first day at P&G. But the issue is this: marketing products to women and inventing products that deliver value to them are two different things. Given the way things stand currently, it’s quite possible - even likely - that some business or technology ideas might never find their way into the startup funnel if viewed only though the lens of males.

That’s also not to say that women are entirely absent from the picture, either. Of course we have some great examples of digital media companies started by women and a handful examples of women who have become high-profile CEOs. But the operative word is ‘handful.’ No one would argue they are few and far between.

This gap is perhaps most pronounced in the start-up community. Most tech startup companies with which I’m familiar have male founders. Of all the VC’s I know I can count exactly three women. On a percentage basis, that’s probably in the low single digits. Claire Cain Miller of the New York Times recently addressed this trend in her terrific article “Why So Few Women in Silicon Valley?” in which she notes that women own 40% of private businesses in the U.S. but create only 8% of venture-backed startups.

Now maybe this gender disparity is not particularly noteworthy or an issue even worthy of consideration. After all, technology has often been the purview of men, so doesn’t the composition of the start-up community merely reflect that fact? That may be the case. But it is only when you understand just how important women are to the fabric of the digital media landscape that you begin to see the opportunity for women in our industry – and why the time is now for women to stand up and start up.

Women Dominate Many Aspects of the Digital Media Environment
One of the amazing things that arises from having access to the wide variety of data that comScore analyzes on a daily basis is the identification of truly interesting trends. Recently, we took a deeper dive into the digital behaviors of women across the globe, including the comparison of those behaviors against men in 40 individual countries. What we found was incredibly illuminating. Not only should women not be ignored, but in fact they were the key drivers behind many of the most relevant trends online today. Consider the following:

Women are More Engaged Online Overall
Female Internet users are more engaged. On a worldwide basis, women spend 8% more time on the Internet than men. They go online 58 times per month on average, more than the 54 times per month for men. They also spend about 4 minutes more per day online than men (82 minutes vs. 78 minutes).

Women Control the Pocketbooks Online, Too
In the U.S., women make up about half the internet population, but generate 58% of dollars spent online. Interestingly, while men and women account for about the same share of spending at the online pure-play retailers (Amazon, Dell, Overstock, etc.), women account for twice the share (67% vs. 33%) of online spending at multi-channel retailers like Wal-Mart and Best Buy.

Women are Heavier Social Media Users
Women have always spent more time on social networking sites than men, but the percentage of time women spend is increasing at a faster rate than for men. Women have often been early adopters of technologies that emphasize sharing and communication, such as photo-sharing, chat and IM. Interestingly, women of all ages tend to become highly engaged in social media. While a smaller percentage of older women use social networking, once they discover it, they are just as engaged as younger women.

Women Have a Few Surprising Interests Online
Women engage in several activities online that are more commonly associated with male interests. For example, they exhibit about the same interest in online gambling as men (so beware those female pokers that sit down at your table!). There is also a large and growing interest among women in online gaming, which includes many women over the age of 35. Additionally, the percentage of women who consume sports content is trending upward at a rapid pace, and is approaching that of men. Women and men are pretty evenly matched in terms of financial news content, with women visiting tax sites more often than men.

What’s interesting thing about these findings is that with few exceptions, they were true across the globe. When women are relatively heavier users of a particular content category, the same thing is often true in opposite corners of the world. That means any stakeholder in the digital advertising value chain – from developers to publishers to agencies – can use this information to employ effective marketing strategies and execute them on a global scale. It’s clear that women are shaping the Internet in some pretty important ways, and it’s time to begin thinking more seriously about how to seize the opportunity.

Marketing to Women through Digital Media = Massive Untapped Opportunity
Our research helps illustrate just how massive an opportunity exists for marketing to women and the advantage of developing technology and products that speak to their needs and improve their lives. While men will continue to play a role in start-ups that serve this market, they are no substitute for a woman.

My hope is that this study shines a light on this important issue and encourages women to be more proactive in the startup space. It demonstrates that given Internet access, women at any age, in any culture, will embrace web technology that delivers value for them. And more and more women across the world are gaining access every day. It’s important for both inventors and funders of new technologies to understand that the definition of ‘value’ on the Web is different in many cases for women than it is for men. In my opinion, therein lie the multitude of opportunities. It would be a shame for the digital media economy if these opportunities are missed.

Download: Women on the Web: How Women are Shaping the Internet

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.

Today comScore made two very important announcements at the TechCrunch Disrupt Conference in NY that we are extremely excited to share with the industry:

1. Tagging with comScore for Media Metrix 360 is now FREE for all publishers
• Any publisher can now participate in Media Metrix 360 measurement with no implementation fee for tagging.
• The program is in beta in the US beginning today and will launch globally later in the summer.
2. Special advantages for start-ups under the new “Start-Up, Step-Up” program
• Any site can tag for free
• If a site has less than 1 million monthly unique visitors, it gets FREE access to basic reporting metrics via the comScore Dashboard
• As a site grows beyond 1 million monthly visitors, those who want to maintain access to basic reporting will graduate to a subscription rate of $799 per month.
• Sites can also choose not to graduate to this subscription level, in which case they will be able to maintain their tags and still be reported under Media Metrix 360 but will no longer get access to reporting.
• For those start-ups with less than 2 million monthly unique visitors interested in a full Media Metrix single category subscription, they can do so at a 50% reduced rate.

We believe that opening our platform and providing additional benefits to the start-up community will go a long way towards helping those in our industry fully demonstrate their value to advertisers and investors. We hope you’re as excited to participate as we are to make this announcement.

We look forward to measuring your success! Participation during the beta period requires a registration code, which may be obtained by emailing directbeta@comscore.com. Once you have your code, register by visiting http://beta.comscoredirect.com.This offer available for websites only and does not include video sites, ad networks, extended web content or ad campaigns.

By now, many in the digital space have heard of comScore’s Media Metrix 360 initiative. This represented a major enhancement to comScore’s original panel-only audience measurement approach, where we blend server side data with our panel data to create a more holistic, comprehensive and granular view of the digital landscape. What might not be so familiar is the name of the methodology we’ve developed to enable this innovation, called Unified Digital Measurement™ (or, UDM for short.) UDM is a measurement philosophy that will guide the formulation of our products as we advance into the future of digital media. In a nutshell, it is unique and powerful because it forges the server and panel data together at an organic level, with the goal of measuring audiences that reflects the fluid way that consumers use the internet today - across devices, platforms, browsers, machines and locations. It works equally well for large sites as well as it does for smaller more fragmented entities, resulting in a more comprehensive, more precise view of how consumers use the internet in an increasingly complex digital world. That is important to our clients, to the industry, and arguably to the digital economy.

From a business standpoint, Unified Digital Measurement gives clients, for the first time, the opportunity to have internal numbers that are fully reconciled with external audience numbers. Consistency is important. Gone are the discrepancies and the endless debate about which is right or wrong. The usage levels tie. Web site audience reach is fully explained and consistent.

When we announced this back in June 2009 of last year, we referred to our approach as ‘a panel-centric hybrid.’ While we were aware that we weren’t the first to coin the term ‘hybrid’, it seemed like a relatively good descriptor - using server data for what it does best (measure total tonnage), panel data for what it does best (measure consumer engagement and demographics), and blending them together at a very granular level to provide more precise audience measurement. This has been a huge initiative for comScore, and we’ve learned a lot in the process.

One of my focus areas at comScore is Global Development. In that capacity, I’ve talked to companies in different countries during the last year who also say they have hybrid approaches to audience measurement. Here’s what I’ve learned: Hybrid is the new black. In some European countries in particular, hybrid approaches to measurement have been in use for over 5 years. They are all somewhat different from one another. But they are also all very different from our ‘panel-centric hybrid’ approach and none can match the quality and accuracy of our approach and the rigor with which we produce our data. So different, in fact, that we think it’s important to separate ours from the pack. That’s why we’re branding it Unified Digital Measurement, or UDM.

How is UDM different, and why does it matter?

One reaction might be, “Great, just what the world needs: another three-letter acronym.” But with the goal of delivering the most precise audience metrics possible, it’s important to understand why these models are NOT interchangeable, and to have nomenclature that reflects that.

Outside of UDM, which is a unique approach, there seem to be two main categories of hybrids - one can be classified as the ‘cut and paste’ hybrid, and the other is the ‘cookie deletion’ hybrid.

• The ‘cut and paste’ hybrid is where metrics from panel and server data are derived independently, and rendered on the same report. There is no analytical link between the two data sources. This approach can be found in both the US and internationally.
• The ‘cookie deletion’ hybrid is where cookie deletion estimation factors are derived from either panel data or cookie data, and applied to server data. These ‘panels’ come from a variety of places. Exact sources are typically not revealed, but they include toolbar data, ISP data and other unnamed sources. In some cases, cookie data from server logs is used to make these adjustments.

In the ‘cut and paste’ approach, there is no analytical link between the panel and server data. If the panel is representative of the universe (which is easier said than done) this approach would theoretically provide a reasonable estimate of demographics. But even if that were the case, it does nothing to adjust for all the many other reasons for differences between unique cookies and unique visitors.

As for the cookie deletion hybrid, it’s no secret that both toolbar panels and ISP panels have major issues in the representivity department. That’s a big problem in and of itself. UDM has a big advantage here because of the effort we put into recruiting and maintaining truly representative panels - an important differentiator. . But there’s more. Our research on this issue has revealed that cookie deletion itself only addresses about 1/3 of the difference that needs to be addressed in reconciling unique cookies with unique visitors –the rest is unaccounted for in these models.

“What else is there?” you might ask. Well, there is a lot.

For perspective, we see about 1.5 billion unique cookies in a month in the US as compared to roughly 200 million unique Internet users. UDM addresses a whole cadre of additional dynamics that are important when it comes to reconciling those two very different metrics and accurately estimating unique visitors (people-based) for a given site. Examples include:

• Multiple users per machine (within households or in public places, like internet cafes)
• Multiple machines per person (people use different machines within a household)
• Multiple locations (people access the internet both at home and at work)
• Multiple browser usage (Chrome and Explorer are open at the same time--that’s two cookies but one person
• Mobile usage

In addition. UDM includes a rigorous auditing process where panel and server data are used to ‘check and balance’ one another, and to ensure that pages are counted the same way across all sites. Examples:

• In the server data, we sometimes see multiple beacons fired from the same page, but from the panel data, we can see there was only one page.
• We sometimes see pages in the panel that are not being counted in the server data
• Both sources can be affected by non-human traffic, which must be removed

Our approach delivers objective and consistent third party validation of audience metrics, which ultimately plays a critical role in improving the functioning of the digital economy

So when our clients log onto our interface on Friday, they will notice that the nomenclature in our reports indicating when a given site began being reported using our new methodology is changing from an ‘H’ to a ‘U.’ This might seem like a trivial change, but there are weak hybrids and even weaker hybrids, and then there’s UDM™. The ‘U’ stands for something: Unified Digital Measurement, which is uniquely different and superior.

It’s been nearly seven months since comScore first announced the introduction of Media Metrix 360, our new panel-centric Unified Measurement of digital audiences. Our stated premise behind this initiative was to bring the digital media industry a solution which integrates server-side web analytics which do a good job of measuring total page views (if properly filtered for non user-requested traffic and counted correctly as one beacon per page) and panel-based audience measurement which provides insights into the behavior of individual people, as opposed to cookies or machines. The response to this initiative has been overwhelmingly positive, as evidenced by the high level of participation among top publishers – approximately 75% of the top 50 publishers in the U.S. are either fully reportable under this new methodology or in the process of doing so – as well as the reaction we’ve gotten from agencies and other industry stakeholders. This new methodology becomes even more important when considering the evolution of digital media, including the emergence of new channels for media consumption (mobile devices, tablets, e-readers, etc.) and the increasing fragmentation of the content landscape.

In short, our industry requires a digital media measurement infrastructure equipped to handle the realities of the next decade and beyond, and comScore has risen to the challenge. As with any major undertaking, there have been some hurdles and challenges we’ve encountered and overcome along the way. But in the course of these seven months, we have learned an extraordinary amount that we believe is enabling us to quickly vault our industry years into the future.

Through this undertaking, we’ve accumulated a new understanding of the highly complex and fragmented digital media landscape. To say that measuring this environment is complicated would be a severe understatement. But we have rapidly unearthed many intricacies and nuances which lead to a more accurate and harmonious measurement landscape.

• One of the earliest – and perhaps most obvious – findings along the way is that we’ve seen ample evidence of the foibles of server-side analytics for measuring the number of unique visitors (i.e. people) who visit a site. Due to many inflationary factors, including cookie deletion and rejection, bot and spider traffic, and site visitation from multiple locations, we’ve found clear and direct evidence that web site servers routinely overstate actual people counts by a factor of two and higher. In particular, the inflationary impact of cookie deletion is consistent with independent research from a variety of other research companies, including Forrester, Belden, Jupiter and Nielsen. The inflation in server data has also now become apparent to the IAB (see their Audience Reach Measurement Guidelines) and academics such as Max Fomitchev, an assistant professor of Computer Science & Engineering at Pennsylvania State University who conducted an exhaustive study and concluded:

  “Cookies are about just as inaccurate in estimating unique visitors as unique network addresses. This is the new and unrealized fact in the industry that has a direct impact on Internet advertising as currently reported unique visitor / core audience size numbers tend to overestimate the true audience size by a large factor (7-30, depending on the visitation frequency and the sampling period).”

As we have reached critical mass among websites participating in 360 programs, we have found some astounding statistics. In the month of December alone, we have seen over 1.5 Billion unique cookies just in the US. For certain portals we have observed significantly more cookies than there are Internet users in the U.S. These realities indicate that it is imperative to develop sophisticated methods to remove inflation caused by cookie deletion, rejection, multiple browsers, multiple devices and multiple locations of access such as home and work.

We’ve also discovered instances that illuminate some of the limitations of panel-based measurement. While we have numerous instances where a panel performs extraordinarily well in measuring audiences, there are some types of sites that can be more difficult to measure with a panel, including those visited by heavy Internet users from work computers and certain niche audiences. Huffington Post is one site that falls into both these categories, which has led to a substantial increase in its unique audience counts under the hybrid methodology. On the other hand, we’ve found that other sites show minimal changes under the 360 methodology.

A few people are under the impression that all we do is simply re-publish a Web site’s server data and charge for it. The statistics we publish are based on integrated panel / server methodology and typically show usage levels substantially lower than what one would obtain from raw server data alone. It is important to keep in mind that we are focused on people, which is what is needed for media planning. When an agency plans a campaign, it is usually looking for unduplicated reach across sites to assess the net reach a campaign will deliver. This can only be done by using a panel to track the same user across sites, using a unique and persistent identifier (which, because of cookie deletion and rejection, cannot be a cookie) to calculate the degree of audience overlap and the allocation of impressions between reach and frequency. It’s also important to identify the specific individual using the computer at any point along with their demos. There is no way to do this in an accurate manner without using a panel. Hence, the need for a panel, and the reason why the Media Metrix 360 methodology is based on a “panel-centric” model.

In addition, our position as an unbiased third-party audience measurement standard creates a burden of continuously and closely auditing any server data source that we receive to ensure it fairly represents the relevant audience being reported. Server data are notoriously complex and require significantly greater rigor than simply slapping a beacon on a page and reporting the calls. We need to filter out non-user requested traffic (pop-ups, i-frames, promotional servers, robotic traffic, etc.) and sort traffic according to its point of origin (geography and then home, work, public computer, mobile device, etc.). It is very important that we count everyone applying the same rules and standards. Furthermore, we have to take great pains to make sure that no company is attempting to game the system to try to get higher audience estimates. We also have to diligently apply edit rules along with branding and ownership standards that are strictly applied and rely on the use of our panel for verification. This particular role that we play is akin to the big 4 audit firms auditing a company’s financial statement by verifying the company’s own data, or the Audit Bureau of Circulation, which audits circulation of newspapers and magazines.

While it’s clear that there is widespread consensus that building Media Metrix 360 is the right approach, a small minority have questioned our decision to charge non-clients $5,000 to set up their site’s reporting using the Media Metrix 360 methodology. We believe this is a very reasonable price to charge for six months of reporting back to the client. If at the end of that period, the client does not want to continue subscribing (no-one has yet done so), we will still continue to implement the 360 methodology free of charge as long as the web site continues to maintain our beacons / tags. While we certainly understand that not every site can afford to purchase our data, the simple reality is that we incur substantial incremental costs associated with auditing, processing, editing and storing terabytes of server data and then integrating it with our panel data using our proprietary statistical methodologies. Companies willingly pay just for audit services -- and at a significantly higher rate than we charge. We believe it is only fair that we charge for the work we have to do and the use of the comScore assets we bring to bear on providing the service.

Some have argued that collecting data in this manner should be a cost of doing business and that some other services offer beacon-based measurement approaches for free. However, this argument neglects to account for how those other services monetize their approach – which is by selling publishers’ audiences (using their own cookies) to advertisers (and occasionally to their competitors), sometimes with the owner of the cookies not even being aware that this “Trojan Horse” strategy is happening. comScore is not in the business of selling a client’s cookies and that is part of the reason why our industry views us as the leading unbiased yardstick of Internet behavior. In life and business, there is no such thing as a free lunch, so Web site operators need to carefully consider the true cost of being beaconed by companies who are in the business of selling their cookies or using them for targeted advertising by leveraging information they got from those sites. In fact, we have observed instances where some Web sites were surprised and dismayed to discover that the “free” services they were using were, in fact, off selling their audience cookies on the online ad exchanges without their knowledge. As you can imagine, in such cases the beacons and tags were swiftly removed.

Ultimately, we both understand and expected some growing pains in undertaking such a major initiative as Media Metrix 360. Change, after all, is never easy. But it often reaps significant rewards down the road, and we’re delighted to find that our clients are moving us down this road faster than we ever anticipated. In the end, we believe the industry will be significantly better equipped for the future using our new reporting service and that it represents a more advanced, transparent and accountable measurement platform than has ever existed in the history of media measurement. And that is a very good thing.



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• Media Metrix 360

I’m delighted to report that at the annual Advertising Research Conference in New York last week, comScorians were the recipients of numerous awards.

To begin, Lars Jensen (Senior Client Service Analyst) and Kevin Levitt (VP) from comScore were members of a team consisting of comScore, Google and MediaVest that won a coveted “ARF David Ogilvy Award” for their work in optimizing an online advertising campaign for Continental Airlines. The Ogilvy Awards celebrate the critical role of consumer research in creating successful advertising. They are named after the legendary David Ogilvy in recognition of his spirited advocacy (and dogged defense) of the importance of research in making good advertising even better.

comScorians also featured prominently in the ARF Great Mind Awards. Honoring research innovation, rising research stars and important member contributions to the field, the ARF Great Mind Awards recognize individuals who contribute to the excellence of, and advance the art and science of, advertising research.

Tania Yuki, Director of Product Management for comScore’s Video Metrix service, won a Bronze Award as a Rising Star. This award recognizes those who, in their first seven years of professional experience, have stood out by their contributions and young leadership.

Also recognized for their research distinction among the “next generation of research stars” were three finalists from comScore in the Rising Star Awards category: Dorothy Advincula, Senior Survey Research Manager in comScore’s San Francisco office, Agil Manizada, Client Service Manager in comScore’s San Francisco office, and Andrew Lipsman, Director of Industry Analysis in comScore’s Chicago office.

Gian Fulgoni, comScore’s Chairman, and Magid Abraham, comScore’s President & CEO, were honored with ARF Member Recognition Awards, which are given to individuals who rise above the daily fire drills and find a way to contribute in a lasting way to the ARF and therefore to the industry.

Congratulations to these award winners and, indeed, to all of comScore’s talented employees who work tirelessly delivering innovative research value to comScore’s many clients.

comScore chairman Gian Fulgoni (fourth from left) celebrates with other ARF honorees.

comScore ARF honorees Agil Manizada, Tania Yuki, and Dorothy Advincula celebrate their awards.

Okay, so I’m bragging.

As the wife of the CEO, I don’t often do this, but this past weekend was not only fun, but inspiring. I’ve just had the pleasure of attending the annual Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year Conference with comScore’s leaders, Magid and Gian, and Gian’s wife Sarinda. Having won the regional Entrepreneur of the Year title for the Mid-Atlantic Region back in June, Magid and Gian were invited to attend the national competition, which culminated in a gala on Saturday night, hosted by Jay Leno.

Hosted in Palm Springs in all its glory, the conference was quite an event. E&Y put on a first class event, all around. Speakers included people like Jack Welch, and Robert Nardelli, CEO of Chrysler (who, IMO, deserves a lot of credit just for showing up.) My favorite quote of the week came from Jack Welch, who, when espousing on the topic of how companies could survive the current economic environment, said: “Your competitors: buy them or bury them. And by that I mean dismember them — pick off all their best people.” (Hmmm…good advice, Jack)

Offering all the glamour and glitz of the Oscars, the gala on Saturday night was the highlight (although Gian, who grew up in the UK during the sixties couldn’t quite get over the Joe Cocker concert on Friday). Complete with champagne, a red carpet, and yes -- even Joan Rivers, the gala was attended by a black-tie crowd of over 3,000 that was just as handsome (if somewhat more geeky) than the Hollywood version. Jay was about the best I’ve ever seen him — hilarious in his prepared bit, and just as good with his spontaneous comments, making fun of politicians and entrepreneurs alike. Our own Dustin Hoffman, as Gian was referred to in a recent Fortune article, was right at home. Even Magid, coined ‘the grim-looking CEO’ in the same article, was all smiles.

It was quite an honor to have made it that far. To get there, Magid and Gian were among 250 regional winners who had been selected from over 3,500 applications from across the country, representing every possible type of company under the sun. Unlike the Oscars, no one knew who the four finalists were in each of the ten categories until they were dramatically announced that evening, via a very fancy video profiling each of the finalists. Low and behold, Magid and Dustin were named one of the four finalists in the Services category, placing them in the top 1% of all applicants. Very exciting.

But when the big moment came, and the envelope was opened with the requisite drama and drum roll, alas, they did not win the big enchilada in their category. That honor went to —and here’s the rather funny part — James Barnes of Oakleaf, which is a waste management company. Sparing you Jay’s comments about how happy he was that “finally, there were some ‘non-Italians’ in the waste management business,” and the jokes at our table about how we ended up in that category (which were very funny), Oakleaf, with its many green initiatives, is actually a very impressive company. Instead of physically hauling trash, the company contracts with retailers, restaurants, property management companies, hospitality companies and corporate clients and hires haulers in the immediate area to do the actual removal. Oakleaf was started with a $45,000 loan in 1995 and has grown at a 30% per year clip to become a company with 750 employees and annual revenues of more than $700 million. Walmart, CVS and Home Depot are three of its flagship accounts. Not too shabby. This was a well deserved honor for them, and all the other winners of the evening.

But the bigger takeaway was this: what a club to be a part of. Having overcome a very colorful and storied collection of overwhelming personal and professional odds, this group of entrepreneurs has made a huge impact on the economy. They have collectively created tens of thousands of jobs, supported hundreds of thousands of people, generated untold millions in taxes, and even at today’s valuations, created billions of dollars of market cap. Pretty impressive.

Another great point Jack Welch made is that as the G20 were gathered in Washington this past weekend trying to figure out a plan for the current economic crisis, that “they should be looking at this crowd -- 3,000 miles west.” I couldn’t agree more. Many, if not most, of these entrepreneurs were not from elite backgrounds or Ivy League schools; most were not 4.0 types. Rather, they were often from humble beginnings, but had the ideas, determination, creativity and pure guts to drive to success. To me, that’s America -- at its best. At this point in our country’s history, I believe it is more important than ever that we encourage and harness this energy. I’m not suggesting that this group will provide a silver bullet to all our economic woes, but they will surely provide an important pillar. They look at an economy like the current one and find opportunities. And they will ultimately profit from them. It’s quite a club.

So as I write this from the airport the next day, in my back-to-reality jeans, getting ready to board my flight and take my middle seat back to DC, there is a lot to reflect on. But my net takeaway is this: despite all the uncertainty about our country’s near-term economic future, I am sure of one thing: I’m going home with winners.

I’m proud to tell you that on Tuesday comScore announced that it will be sponsoring the planting of more than one million trees through its new initiative, comScore Trees for Knowledge. The trees will be planted in developing nations across the globe as part of the incentive program that comScore uses to recruit and retain Internet users for its global panel.

The initiative is in partnership with the non-profit organization Trees for the Future, which has planted nearly 50 million trees throughout developing nations in Central America, Africa, and Asia. Not only do the trees provide environmental benefits by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere (one mature tree removes about 50 pounds of carbon dioxide each year just to give you an idea), but they improve the livelihoods of those living in these communities.

Check out the video below from Trees for the Future to see the impact trees can have around the world as told by its fascinating founder Dave Deppner.

Last week, I spoke at a widget conference, WidgetWebExpo. The prior (and only other) time I’ve spoken at a conference on this topic was a year ago. At that time, widgets were just starting to get legs, so to speak, and we had just introduced a service to measure them, comScore Widget Metrix.

My over-arching reaction as I looked around one year later was “what a difference a year makes.” The conference a year ago was packed, and had a whole Gen-Y, very edgy feeling — held in an old movie theatre in SoHo; most of the attendees were very young, many dressed in shorts, t-shirts and baseball hats. There was a lot of energy, with a feeling that was closer to a frat party than a conference. On my panel, the speaker next to me proclaimed “the thing about widgets is…if you’re over 30, you just don’t get them.” Ahem. I am indeed well over 30. (Of course I took that to mean I must look very young :))

But to me, there were red flags. There was a lot of fun, cool applications, with no clear value proposition, and for most, no path to monetization. The general thinking was “get distribution, then we’ll worry about that.” I remember one talk where the CEO and founder of a company showed a very fun widget that allowed you to animate an image of yourself, and the audience loved it. Then, he asked the audience (rather somberly): “But who will pay me for this?” No one answered.

This was the state of the widget world at the time: lots of cool technology, and our numbers clearly showed that audiences were gobbling them up — not just in the US, but also abroad. People clearly liked the idea of distributed content — a little nugget they could grab and place in their space that delivered information, content, fun, or a combo of the three. However, with a few exceptions, that pesky little topic of how to actually make money in the space remained unanswered.

That is in stark contrast to this year’s conference. I recognized very few faces from last year. The attendees were fully clad in the usual business casual attire – but, not one baseball cap to be seen. The organizer/sponsor of last year’s conference is no longer in the widget business, and their executives have moved on to other companies. The community has also aged quite a bit — almost everyone in attendance was now over 30, many over 40. There were also many fewer attendees. Overall, the conference was ….. well, let’s just say there was nothing edgy about it.

Although they have changed the way many use the web, widgets clearly have not lived up to the hype they created a year ago. There are a lot of reasons why, including that pesky little problem of having to eventually make money, which has caused more than one of these companies to either fold or pivot and change direction. I learned that Facebook is moving all the widgets to a separate tab so that they don’t show up on the profile page. The term “de-widgetization’ was mentioned more than once. Even Fred Wilson, a big early supporter of widgets both as a user and an investor who spoke at the conference, discussed this in his blog, culminating in his proclamation that ‘widgets suck.’

And yet, VC money continues to flow into the space. According to an article in MarketWatch by Scott Austin, who is an assistant managing editor at VentureWire: “At least 12 start-ups that build or distribute widgets have raised $191 million so far this year, including RockYou, which earlier this week announced a $35 million round of funding.” Feels very circa 1999 to me.

Yet as I see it, something very important is being missed here, or at least not broadly understood. As marketers, it’s not often that we see an environment as we do with both search and distributed content, where we literally have people waving their arms, saying “Hey, over here! I’m interested in this subject/function/content/type of game, etc.” Talk about the opportunity to target!

It’s clear that widgets have demonstrated the potential to do three key things:

1. deliver a very coveted target to advertisers — people who skew younger (both male and female) as well as slightly older groups
   
2. reach an audience of global proportions, often in a very short timeframe
   
3. reach people at the time of engagement—capitalizing on the interest levels, emotional availability, etc.

Those are three very powerful characteristics. So my question is: why aren’t more of these widgets delivering advertising in some form?

Some of them are. I know that Slide, for example, includes advertising, although I have not seen it personally. A notable exception is Splashcast. They develop widgets for the likes of Nike that, based on IP address, will deliver localized widgets with in-language branding and content. That’s a great example, I think, of how to use this medium to reach and build a global audience that widgets can deliver. But I haven’t seen a lot of that.

Being with a measurement company, my bias is of course, that measurement could make an important contribution here. So here’s the project I’d love to do: an ad effectiveness study to quantify the difference in impact between ads delivered in widgets to those same ads delivered to that same target, using traditional placement strategies. For example, I’d like to compare the branding impact/clickthrough/engagement/conversion rates (pick any metric) for a photo-printing ad for Kodak, delivered via a photo-sharing widget as compared to that same ad delivered via a normal campaign. Would the effectiveness of the ads be greater when a young mom is looking at recent pictures of her kids than they would if she saw those ads on other sites while she was, for example, reading the news? What about Nike — will kids be more likely to click on the Nike ad and view the newest cool sneaks when they are engaging with the NCAA widget that delivers the most recent scores than they would on other sites?

I’m betting yes. And while it wouldn’t be a silver bullet for the widget industry, it would be a strong point of quantified value and differentiation that would allow widgets to plant their flag in the busy landscape of the media mix. Perhaps it would even bring back some of those young developers with big ideas in shorts and baseball caps. I miss them.

Juice Analytics, a comScore vendor, recently prepared an intriguing treemap of the Internet using our data to showcase their abilities. For the full interactive treemap and an explanation of how the data are displayed, click here.

Previously: My First Impressions of Davos and Davos Moments 1-3.

My fourth Davos moment came when Magid and I participated in a three-hour exercise where we were essentially tasked with finding a formula for peace in the Middle East. Upon entering the meeting room, we were each assigned to random groups. Each group was given a set of facts about the fictional country, which loosely resembled Iran, Iraq, the UAE and “Dominania,” aka the United States. A fifth group consisted of private sector investors, presumably Sovereign Wealth Funds. The session was moderated by a well-known journalist from Al Jazeera. Most of the participants were high ranking officials from Middle Eastern countries. Interestingly, I believe that one U.S. government official and I were the only American-born team members.

As it happened, I was assigned to the “Dominania” group, and was selected by my team to be our ambassador to the other countries. We were given instructions to come up with a plan to achieve peace and stability in the region, while furthering the economic interests of our people. Our team had members from Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Egypt, and I have to say, they were all bright, articulate, and eager to devise a plan that achieved these objectives. We each embraced our roles.

Together, we managed to devise some very interesting proposals. And I suddenly developed a newfound appreciation for the difficulty of Condi Rice’s job.

One thing that was clear to me from the exercise is that if we’re ever going to make progress toward stability in the Middle East, all sides are going to have to learn how to communicate, negotiate and collaborate in ways they have not before.

So, there you have it: just a few of my many, many Davos Moments. Oh, and one other magical thing about Davos: it is the only place in the world where my husband will drag ME onto the dance floor at 2:00 am in the morning. Those of you who know us understand the significance of that. For those who don’t, you’ll have to trust me when I say that was also a Davos Moment – one of the best kind.

Previously: My Impressions of Davos

I thought I’d share my “Davos Moments” with you, when what I witnessed was so powerful I got chills. One session alone spawned three such moments.

The session was headed by Miguel Nicolelis, a professor of neuroprosthetics at Duke. Prior to this session, I didn’t know that neuroprosthetics was even a word. Essentially, it is the ability for your brain to move a prosthetic attached to your body just by thinking about it.

Professor Nicolelis gave us an amazing live demonstration of his work. Via satellite, he showed a monkey named Clementine walking on a treadmill at his lab in Durham. The brainwaves from the monkey were transmitted to a robot in Tokyo. Using mathematical models that replicated electric signals sent by the brain to cause muscles to move, the data were fed to the robot in real time, causing it to walk just like Clementine. In another variation of the experiment, they had the monkey think about walking, which caused the robot, in Tokyo, to walk just as the monkey would. But here’s the clincher—the amount of time it took all of this to occur was 118 milliseconds. That is faster than the time it takes Clementine to send signals from her own brain to her own leg.

Thinking about our soldiers coming home from Iraq who have lost limbs, as well as a 16 year old boy from our hometown who had an accident this summer and is now paralyzed from the neck down and the hope that this research represents for them, literally gave me chills and brought tears to my eyes. Meet Miguel and see a demo on YouTube.

That was my first Davos moment.

There were two other professors from MIT on that same panel who are also doing fascinating research in this area and each had equally gripping presentations. One, Hugh Herr, is a double amputee. While still in high school, he was mountain climbing one day, got caught in a storm and contracted frostbite, resulting in the loss of both his legs from the knee down. Since then, he has become a leading-edge researcher and has what he claims is the “benefit” of being able to test his work on himself. Seeing him walk, you would never guess anything out of the ordinary. But during his presentation, he lifted his pant leg and walked through the audience, inviting us all to closely observe how the prosthetic mirrored the complex movement of the foot and leg. It was amazing, eliciting images of “The Six Million Dollar Man” and “The Bionic Woman.”

Hugh’s future plans are to connect his brain to this amazing prosthetic device. This not only includes information flow from the brain to the limb, but also from the limb to the brain. So, when Clementine is thinking of walking, the robot will be walking, but with this new technology, Clementine will also feel like she’s walking. Hugh told us “This year, I’m happy to tell you I can walk – even run – on the beach. Next year, I hope to be able to tell you that I can also feel the sand on my feet.” He went on to joke that: “the last time my brain was connected to my legs, I was a D student in high school. Then, they became disconnected, and I became an MIT professor. Not sure what will happen when they’re connected again – hope I don’t revert to my high school days. Better get tenure first.” And, yes, he still mountain climbs!

That was another Davos moment.

But there’s more. As I was writing this piece, Miguel Nicolelis himself just happened to sit down next to me! He is as genuine and as down-to-earth a guy as you’ll ever meet. We got to talking, and for the next 45 minutes, he gave me a personalized lesson in neuroprosthetics, including a discussion of the mathematical models that explain the neural signals. (Surprisingly, they are actually linear.)

In addition, I learned of Miguel’s aggressive plans – already underway – to build a string of “science cities” all over his home country of Brazil, the center of which will be in Natal, a remote and impoverished area. The vision is that these will be high-quality schools that specialize in science-related subjects, but provide high quality education, often using scientific concepts for learning in all areas, such as the scientific method. The plan is that, over time, these hubs will attract both high-tech companies and research institutions, a concept that is taking hold in several developing countries, and especially across Asia.

You can read more about this in this month's Scientific American, but the idea is to create an environment in Brazil where accomplished students can work and succeed without emigrating to other countries, thereby slowing the brain drain and improving the socioeconomic conditions, and ultimately, improving the quality of life for the people of the students’ home country. Miguel believes strongly that “you don’t need a Ph.D. to make contributions to science, you just need the right environment.” In the last few years, he’s managed to secure initial funding for this project, and 400 students are currently enrolled. His plan calls for 1 million students to be enrolled in a series of schools all over Brazil two years from now. One million students. Talk about “Thinking Big.”

Next: Davos Moment #4

I’ve just returned from the World Economic Conference (“WEF”) in Davos, Switzerland, where the world’s leaders gather to discuss important issues, and to draw attention to, and devise solutions for, the world’s most pressing problems. For five days, from early morning to very late in the night, people gather in formal and informal sessions to address key questions or to share leading-edge developments in almost every conceivable area, ranging from economics to politics to technology to neuroscience to cancer research to education …just to name a few.

The invitations are quite exclusive, so for those of you who are wondering “so how did you get invited?” I’ll tell you: I wasn’t. My husband, Magid Abraham, CEO of comScore, was invited as a result of comScore being selected as a Technology Pioneer by the WEF in 2007. However, spouses were also invited, so I had the good fortune to attend with him. Because most sessions were open to spouses, we were able to divide and conquer (I am a member of the management team at comScore). Collectively, we came away with a wealth of new business contacts, knowledge and ideas.

This year, of course, the economy was front and center and sparked a lot of spirited debate. Global warming and world poverty were discussed in a session jointly led by Bono and Al Gore. Another major theme was social entrepreneurship – companies innovating ways to give back to the community as a basic part of their business model. Bill Gates delivered a keynote talk on that topic.

Because Davos represents such a unique opportunity to learn about so many things -- literally around the clock – extended sleep is simply not an option for most people. Two to four hours is the norm. At any given time, there are five to seven sessions running, and the biggest challenge is deciding which ones to attend.

The spirit of Davos is terrific: informal, friendly, and with the expectation that everyone there wants to meet everyone else.

Time after time, I met prominent people in everyday situations. At one point, the person next to me on a bus was the Prime Minister of a small Asian country. Another person I sat down next to, and ended up having coffee with, was the President of a developing country in Africa, and the person in front of me that handed me a plate in the buffet line was the CEO of a Fortune 100 company. One night, Magid and I were invited to a small, private dinner by Gloria Arroyo, President of the Philippines.

Basically, the norm is you introduce yourself and you chat. In a few cases, egos prevent the conversation from progressing much more. However, in most cases there is a genuine curiosity about the other party – giving birth to business relationships and friendships with very interesting individuals.

Next: My “Davos Moments”