comScore Downgrades YuMe

When comScore released its U.S. ad network rankings for June last week, YuMe was at No. 8, a noteworthy feat considering the young startup serves only video ads. We thought the company breaking into the top 10 was impressive enough to post about it.

But competitors and commenters quickly cried foul, piling into our comments section and inboxes with claims that YuMe’s ranking had been unfairly counted. It received credit for the entirety of MSN’s page views despite only serving ads on a portion of Microsoft’s unsold inventory, they said.

Since then, without noting a correction, comScore has revised the rankings in its July 21 press release to place YuMe at No. 32. The company is now counted at 59 million uniques, as opposed to 134 million in the original version.

When we asked comScore for comment, the metrics firm disclosed it had made the change on Friday after deciding it had miscounted YuMe.

“Certain traffic was incorrectly attributed to the YuMe Video Network, and that misassigned traffic has since been removed from the entity,” a spokesperson said via email.

YuMe, meanwhile, said it was unfairly singled out. CEO Jayant Kadambi wrote via email:

“We’re extremely disappointed with comScore’s handling of this situation. We have made every effort to supply comScore with the documentation they requested. Instead, comScore has chosen to apply measurement rules to YuMe that are different than those they applied to every other ad network and publisher in the AdFocus report. We think comScore should revise the June AdFocus immediately, either to restore the original rankings, or to apply the same standards applied to YuMe’s measurement to all other properties in the report.”

comScore was quick to assure us that it ranks sites based on independent measurement, not that supplied by the company. I do think YuMe is in the right to ask for better industry standard measurement, but at the same time the company probably shouldn’t have made such a big deal of its high ranking by issuing a press release and so forth. What nobody’s arguing at this point is that YuMe serves ads to as many visitors as the other traditional ad networks who were in the top 10.

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