ComScore eyes up television measurement forays, and hires former Arbitron exec

Fitzgerald, who was previously vice president of cross-platform services at Arbitron, has been hired with the remit of establishing relationships with TV clients and data providers and “overseeing the expansion of ComScore’s suite of digital measurement products to include the measurement of television viewing”.

She will be charged with developing “strong relationships” with major media firms and data suppliers to ensure that ComScore “meets their needs for three-screen [TV, mobile and internet] viewing”.

ComScore CMO Linda Abraham said: “Joan’s reputation for establishing strong customer relationships and expertise in designing cross-media measurement solutions make her an excellent addition to ComScore. We look forward to her playing a key role in expanding ComScore’s capabilities in TV measurement so that we can provide our clients with a truly unified view of digital consumer behaviour.”

It is an interesting move for ComScore, which added mobile media measurement to its core web measurement proposition in 2008 when it purchased M:Metrics. Further details on its TV ambitions were unavailable at the time of publication, though it seems likely ComScore will concentrate on trying to source set-top box data from cable and satellite companies.

ComScore was recently involved in a major cross-platform audience measurement project, commissioned by broadcaster NBC, to run during the Winter Olympics. In that project ComScore, alongside web analytics firm Omniture, was responsible for measuring how many people watched Olympic events online while Arbitron measured cable and broadcast TV audiences.