CHICAGO INNOVATION AWARDS

comScore, Inc.

Although online advertising has grown to be a $24 billion annual business, it still represents less than 10% of advertising spending across all U.S. media. This is very concerning to online businesses because consumers spend more than 25% of their media usage time online today and this means that the Internet is not getting its fair share of ad spending. It also means that marketers are likely spending more than necessary to promote their brands by failing to capitalize on the efficiencies presented by the Internet. If marketers could be convinced that online marketing was a more cost-effective alternative, this could be very helpful to the U.S. economy.

To prove to traditional advertisers that they should move more dollars from traditional media to the Internet, websites and advertisers needed proof that online advertising campaigns are able to cost-effectively build sales for the advertised brands -- both online and at retail. This was especially important for the $1 trillion consumer packaged goods industry, whose products are bought mainly at supermarkets. The industry needed specific proof that their use of online advertising was capable of moving products off of retail shelves in a cost-effective manner.

Enter comScore, co-founded by Gian Fulgoni, a 2008 inductee into the Chicago Entrepreneurship Hall Of Fame and winner of the 2008 Ernst & Young Technology Entrepreneur of the Year award.

comScore built a sophisticated solution. First comScore recruited a panel of 2 million people who have given comScore explicit permission to download its patented software application to their computers. This unique technology allows comScore to understand everything that each panel member does on the Internet, including what online ads they receive and what products they buy online. comScore then forged relationships with some of the country’s largest supermarket retailers, allowing comScore to match the name and addresses of the comScore panel with retailers’ loyalty card databases that contain detailed data on the products that the card holders bought in the supermarkets. This effectively created a ”single source” datamart containing each matched panelist’s online exposure to online ad campaigns and their purchasing of the advertised products at the retail stores

By comparing an ad-exposed group of panelists (i.e. consumers who saw the ad online) with a non-exposed control group (i.e. consumers who did not see the ad online) and examining their retail buying, comScore is able to precisely quantify a lift in in-store sales among consumers exposed to the ad.

An example of this capability is the proprietary database matching that comScore uses in partnership with the Kroger supermarket chain and dunnhumbyUSA, a leading consumer insight company. Through the use of eROI, comScore has been able to prove that online advertising for CPG products can have a substantial positive impact in terms of increasing in-stores sales for the advertised brands, while also demonstrating that online campaigns can be more cost effective than the use of traditional media such as television.