Comscore is best known for measuring ad audiences, but they play the game in addition to keeping score. They just expanded their programmatic targeting business with the launch of Proximic by Comscore, which combines the context targeting provided by the company’s 2015 Proximic acquisition with ID-based and ID-free segments based on other Comscore data. Activation runs through integrations with LiveRamp, Xandr, Freewheel, and others.
The company, which came out of stealth in August with $6 million seed funding, can automatically map the flow of data from collection through how it is stored to whether it is being shared with third parties, then can create a trouble ticket to alert an engineering team when there’s a problem.
Is privacy a competitive differentiator? Fewer marketers seem to think so: the annual Salesforce State of Marketing Survey found just 51% exceed the legal requirements for privacy compliance, compared with 61% in the previous report. Maybe they’re just busy with other work: the number of average data sources grew from ten to fifteen, and the number of marketing metrics used increased by 13%.
It’s tough to get brand safety right, but the industry keeps trying. IPG Mediabrands announced a new set of tools to find and block inappropriate ad placements, while IAS expanded its suitability measurements to include standards from the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM). Meanwhile, DoubleVerify admitted a mistake made brand safety on X/Twitter look worse than it really was in October 2023 and March 2024.