Comscore Logic ≠ Google Revenue Growth …

restated as … Comscore ≈ Σ(measured clicks)+/- {insert margin of error, PR spin}

Blogosphere … Google 1; Comscore 0

Comscore is in the business of measurement of clicks. Google is in the business of monetization of clicks. The big disconnect over the past 24 hours was that Comscore had effectively convinced the market that Google search was down – predicting that digital advertising revenues were ‘off’ … and well, err, seems they were wrong.

Here is Comscore’s analysis and position …

Comscore Blog - "Why Google's surprising paid click data are less surprising" by Magid Abraham (James Lamberti, SVP of Search and Media at comScore, is a co-author of the post) on February 29. 2008

The industry had well covered Comscore’s position – refer:

If you have more than ten minutes and really want to explore Google's position on privacy, head over to The Google Privacy Channel. Remember, it is not just search ... think DoubleClick, Picasa, Orkut, Google Checkout, Google Talk (IM), GMail, etc ...

Note to self ... did we ever have a Transparency 1.0?

If you're a publisher ... sure. Terms of Service. Privacy Policies. PGP. Third party attestation authorities. Trust deeds. Trust certificates. If you're a consumer, you were educated to delete cookies in your browser - (know how to DoubleClick cookie opt-out?) ... and educated to Trust certain web sites.

Refer 'grab' above from Visual Thesaurus (btw, great product!) ... Transparency ... free from deceit ... easily perceived or understood.

The Internet is a powerful medium - for marketers and participants alike. For most participants, however, digital marketing is anything but easily perceived or understood.

OK, it’s bad enough that websites track my ‘behavior’. Behavior is ‘tracked’ via your interaction with the website as expressed by the ‘clickstream’ … what you view, where you click, how often you come back, how long you dwell on the site or a page, whether you watched a video clip, data you enter, search terms you use. (BTW – this is big business – players such as Omniture, Coremetrics). However, it is another thing when ISPs (internet service providers) propose to track and correlate the web sites you visit, including deep packet inspection.

Digital marketing is not bad. Lack of transparency is …

I’m an advocate for greater transparency in digital marketing. Transparency isn’t buried in the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use. Transparency is in actually telling people what you are doing – in plain English. Whether on the web, your cell phone or your HD DVR, providers want more and more granular data about … YOU and WHAT YOU DO. We’re being instrumented and correlated at a rate that most folks just don’t understand. We’re going to experience a whole new wave of issues once we enter the realm of “deep-packet inspection” … keep checking the (revised) fine print from your service provider.

I’ll blog more about this over the next few months.