ComScore Ready to Track Widgets and Embeds

In an expansion of its core audience measurement service, ComScore says it can now track audience reach for widgets, embedded videos, and other distributed content.

ComScore EVP Linda Boland Abraham said Thursday in a statement the new product rollout is a response to an emerging Web landscape where “content and advertising inventory [originate] outside the confines of the publisher’s Web server.”

“With so much distributed content being leveraged for syndication or advertising delivery, both advertisers and publishers have demonstrated an interest in better understanding the reach of these extended content offerings and the nature of their audiences,” Abraham said in a statement.

The new offering, called ComScore Extended Web, also comes with a gross ratings point equivalency metric for online media and the ability to measure “publisher ad packages.” The latter offering allows advertisers buying a pre-defined segment of a publisher’s site — for instance,sports or auto pages — to independently measure the available reach of that buy. Previously comScore only offered estimates of a Web site’s entire audience, leaving media buyers with only publisher-provided reach estimates for site-segmented buys.

Of the company’s GRP equivalency metric, Group M’s VP of media, Gerard Broussard, said in a statement it “allows us to more easily plan the digital channel against the same reach benchmarks that many of our clients use in their traditional media efforts.”

All three new services are available to ComScore clients globally.

The mechanisms available to track widgets and other distributed content include adding tags to URL query strings and embedding beacons on every page. With the release, ComScore has invited publishers to sign up at cxw.comscore.com to have their free-range content measured.