ComScore YouTube Partner Reporting

Many of you have requested traffic reporting to demonstrate the size and demographics of the people you entertain and inform every day on YouTube. Today, comScore announced that their August Video Metrix reporting would include viewership data across all YouTube partners. We want to make sure that you understand how comScore arrives at their numbers for your channel(s), and why there may be instances where the comScore data does not match what you see in your YouTube account. 

We’ve invited comScore’s Product Manager, Dan Piech, to walk you through their methodology. If you have further questions about how things are calculated in the comScore reports, visit www.comscore.com/youtube, or ask your partner manager. Take it away, Dan! 

“ComScore has invested significant time and resources toward ensuring that the data captured, processed, and presented is of the highest quality, retaining the industry-leading data integrity and privacy standards comScore is proud to have helped establish.

ComScore’s Video Metrix data for YouTube Partners comes from two primary sources:

1) A panel of roughly 1 million individuals in the U.S. and 2 million worldwide. These individuals have given comScore permission to measure their Internet activity, including video viewing. From this source, comScore is able to understand video viewers’ demographics, engagement rates, viewing patterns, and a plethora of additional attitudinal and behavioral characteristics.

2) Census-level video impression “tags” relayed through YouTube’s server infrastructure. Anytime anyone views a video that belongs to a YouTube Partner who has enabled comScore measurement, we count as an impression tag. No personally identifiable information about the viewers is contained within these tags – they are merely a notification to comScore that a video has been viewed. This data is used to calibrate comScore’s panel insights to a 100% accurate census-based measure of views, ensuring the most accurate data possible. This process is known as “Unification” and comScore is an industry-leader in pioneering this method of joining both panel and census-based market research measurements.

There may be times when comScore’s data for video views differs from what you see in your YouTube account. This could happen because comScore’s data:

1) Is only representative of computer-based viewing at home and work locations, whereas YouTube's data is for all viewing, regardless of platform. 

2) Is currently only presented for one country at a time, whereas YouTube’s data represents all worldwide viewing.

3) Uses different mechanisms than YouTube to filter out non-human traffic, spider/bot views, and fraud attempts.

4) Does not include views of Partners’ claimed UGC content, whereas YouTube’s data may include these in some cases.”

Thanks Dan. We hope that you’ll find this reporting helpful!