Calacanis Take Down of ComScore, Advocates Short:- Comscore's CMO Responds

Jason has done some fire breathing posts/emails before but this one packs quite a punch. Ya gotta love people with fight in em. Hopefully the lad does not burn himself out.

More here:

ComScore Tries to Buy Me Off
------------------------
This summer the tough guys at Comscore approached me with a
clandestine deal after I continued to publicly complain about their
methods. The message was clear: if I stopped criticizing them and
publicly supported their server data measurement program they would
not charge me. The $10,000 it would cost a year for this service would
be free for me if I threw my fellow entrepreneurs under the bus.

Their email to me included something out of the a Sopranos episode:
"Normally there is a cost to implement, but in this case we will
gladly waive the charge if you are interested." Yeah, and if you're
not interested perhaps you would like to come on a fishing trip with
us this weekend.

You bastards think that after a *decade* of me trying to stop your
extortion you can by me off by simply waiving some fees? I could
easily pay the $10,000 fee today but I will never give you guys a
dime. I will remember what you did to me when I was coming up forever.

I'd rather lose half my revenue from advertising as Mahalo grows from
a top 1,000 site (2007), to the top 400 sites (2008) and now a top 200
site (2009), and eventually even a top 50 site I hope (2011?)--than
give you even one ounce of my support.

I wrote back: "You guys are evil for charging companies--I would never
support you. Quantcast and Google are going to crush you guys.... And
I'm telling everyone I know to support Quantcast."

They never contacted me again.

Here is the response from ComScore's CMO, it's good:

Linda Abraham, comScore's CMO said...
Jason:
You really need to get your facts straight.

1) First of all, we measure Unique People rather than Unique Cookies which web analytics systems erroneously can unique visitors. I would challenge you to find any kind of server side measurement system that measures people, not machines or cookies. To show you how absurd server side numbers are, AOL Inc. had about 259 MM Unique cookies which gives it over 125% reach compared to a true reach of 54%. The inflation is driven by cookie deletion, multiple browsers, multiple machines for the same users, multiple devices etc… Large companies do not complain about their numbers because they know their server side numbers are flawed as obviously evident by the AOL metrics, not because ‘comScore fixes your number”. This dynamic is less obvious with smaller sites—they don’t realize how inflated their numbers are until their reach starts exceeding 100%.

2) Our Hybrid measurement is not mere pixel tracking as you assert. Our panel, which allows us to distinguish people from cookies, is a central part of the system used to correct for the inflation of cookie based server-side measurement.

3) You are confused about our pricing, so let me explain it to you:

• We charge a one-time setup fee of $5,000 that enables us to audit the beacon implementation and make sure we are measuring everyone consistently. This means auditing beacons on every page to identify pages with multiple beacons that result in over-counting, and pages with no beacon that result in undercounting. We have found about 15% of sites have placed multiple beacons on a page, and over 30% of sites that have missed a number of pages on their site. This auditing function is crucial to protect the system from being gamed. Imagine what happens, if unchecked, sites start cross beaconing each other to inflate their audience. The ‘free’ services do not incur this cost because not much is expected of them. We have seen many sites where the Quantcast beacons ‘fire’ up to 7 times from a single page!
• The initial $5,000 setup fee pays for that audit and gives you access to our reports on comScore Direct $5K for 6 month period.
• The $10K annual price is for ongoing access to our comScore Direct reporting system. However, you don’t have to subscribe to continue being measured using the hybrid methodology. As long as you maintain your beacons we will measure you with our hybrid methodology FREE of charge.

4) You may be upset because you don’t get a free subscription to the reports. We make no apologies for charging for access to our reporting system. That is the only revenue source we have to cover our costs. In doing so, we make a ‘mafia like’ pre-tax margin of less than 9% . Google and Quantcast offer metrics for ‘free’ because they have an advertising supported model. They use the data they collect from users or publishers to sell targeted advertising. We chose not to have a business model based on selling advertising, because we do not want to compete with our clients who make a living selling advertising, and who need a neutral third party to provide audience data that is free from conflicts of interest.

5) As for the free trial offer we made you, you need to get your facts straight. When we rolled out this new hybrid system, we needed some sites to beacon with us early to test it out and get user feedback .This is a common practice you might have heard of—it’s called ‘free beta.’ You chose not to participate, which is fine. But there was no attempt to ‘buy your silence’ and we challenge you to prove otherwise.

We provide a valuable service and we are proud of it. We offer the most accurate 3rd audience measurement tools available which are paid for in real dollars by more than 1,200 companies who, unlike you, freely choose them despite available ‘free’ services.

It’s unfortunate that you were picked on as a child. It must have been difficult to you. But you’re an adult now. If you want to debate, please do so with facts, not just blind fury.