Quantcast bags big-name support from MTV

US-- Upstart web measurement firm Quantcast has secured big-name backing for its hybrid approach to online audience research – MTV Networks.

The Viacom media unit is to tag all the sites in its portfolio for inclusion in Quantcast's Quantified Publisher programme, including MTV.com, VH1.com, Nick.com and ComedyCentral.com.

These tags allow Quantcast to count directly the number of visits to a site, which it then combines with more traditional panel-based data to produce information on reach, frequency, popularity and audience profile.

Colleen Fahey Rush, MTV's executive vice president of strategic insights and research, believes Quantcast's approach “goes far in addressing many of the shortcomings of other online measurement services”.

By themselves, panels – such as those used by ComScore and Nielsen Online – can struggle to accurately represent audiences for niche sites due to limitations in the number of people they track; while on the flipside, page tagging data can overestimate audiences as ultimately the technique counts page views rather than actual people.

To date, MTV has relied on audience data from ComScore in negotiations with advertisers. Fahey Rush told Research the company would continue to use ComScore's numbers alongside the new Quantcast data for a period of time.

“ComScore are, for better or worse, the currency in the US,” she said. But asked whether Quantcast may soon snatch that crown, she replied: “I sure hope so.”

In two years of operation, Quantcast has signed up 80,000 publishers to its Quantified Publisher programme, including NBC and the Fox Broadcasting Network.

Author: Brian Tarran

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