The Board of Directors of the Association for Media Research (AIMC) has unanimously selected Comscore as the recommended digital audience meter for the Spanish market. The election takes place within the framework of the competition called by the association last March.
The company takes the baton from GfK, which was selected for the task in March 2021 and has carried it out from the beginning of 2022 until now, in accordance with the extension granted to the contract, valid until December 31, 2025, to continue serving as recommended meter for the duration of the tender process.
GfK and Nielsen had submitted their proposals to the AIMC competition
Comscore’s proposal has prevailed precisely over that of GfK, which had also submitted to the competition, and that of Nielsen. The AIMC has expressed its gratitude to both companies for presenting their offers and has congratulated Comscore for having been awarded the tender.
In the statement, the association highlights Comscore’s hybrid methodology, which combines census data with data from different panels, and which was one of the requirements of the document. It has also valued the incorporation of new developments and services in recent years, especially linked to social networks and artificial intelligence.
He also ensures that this will be complemented with other utilities. The AIMC highlights the incorporation of online audiences from connected television, through an agreement with Fifty5Blue: and greater regional granularity by Autonomous Communities and Provinces, for which it will expand its current panels.
Likewise, Comscore will also create a multi-device panel representative of the Spanish Internet population, whose responsibility will be Kantar Insights; and the possibility of exploiting the results through different tools.
The election of Comscore represents the validation by the Board of Directors of the opinion of the Digital Technical Committee, created within the AIMC for the tender. The AIMC assures that from now on the process of concreting and signing the framework contract that will govern the service, as well as its governance model, begins in order to comply with the principles of transparency, impartiality, inclusivity, proportionality, non-discrimination, comparability and verifiability.
As indicated in the document, Comscore will carry out the task for an initial period of three years, which could be extended to two more. The AIMC’s decision marks the return of Comscore as the recommended gauge of digital audiences, a role it carried out for years before GfK’s selection.
At the time, the meter change was influenced, among other things, by various well-known controversies, such as the overestimation of 2 million users in the The Vanguard and ABC in March 2019, or the $5 million fine received in the United States for falsifying his accounts and the growth of his business.
However, GfK was also forced to correct non-compliance in its system at the request of the Digital Audience Measurement Monitoring Commission a year after starting to operate. The composition of the panel of individuals, the representativeness in some segments of the sample or the ratio of devices per panelists were some of the points.
Comscore’s proposal would have responded, in the eyes of the AIMC, to the requirements established in the tender document which, among other things, was a hybrid measurement system that combined census data with a multi-device user panel, as well as covering the largest possible number of sites and digital platforms and establishing clear reliability thresholds for the publication of data.
It also had to have a set of mandatory metrics that the system must offer for different digital environments; and incorporate mechanisms to eliminate invalid traffic, including bots and other automated systems.
And economically, the candidates had to present a plan that guaranteed the long-term sustainability of the system, including forecasts for the evolution of rates and the financing structure of the service.
