Data and analytics company comScore Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR) has seen its stock drop 56% since the beginning of this year. The company faced challenges from the COVID-19 pandemic as its movie business generated lower-than-expected revenues in its most recent quarter.
However the company sees massive potential in two areas that it believes will provide significant growth opportunity. One is in media measurement and the other is in gaming. comScore remains increasingly optimistic about what it can achieve in these spaces in order to drive growth in 2021 and beyond.
Media measurement
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought about rapid changes across the media landscape with changes in consumption behaviors such as an increased shift to gaming, streaming, digital spending and mobile shopping.
As the nature of media content becomes more cross-platform, the measurement of buying and selling trends is moving away from traditional methods that use age and gender demographics towards more of an audiences and impression-based measurement.
These changes need consistent measurement for video across the linear, digital and OTT platforms and comScore is well-positioned to provide this as it has been involved in impression-based measurement for many years. The new approach will help advertisers make better decisions with regards to their ad spend by eliminating duplicate and redundant data.
Through its Exact Commercial Ratings solution, comScore will use impressions to measure success by planners and buyers irrespective of where the content and new advertising is viewed. comScore has the advantage of a massive data footprint of millions of connected devices, 60 million set-top boxes, 12 million smart TVs and more that will enable this process.
The company expects to put this advertising system into operation in 2021 and sees a greenfield opportunity in this space as demand for the addressable market grows fast.
Gaming
Another greenfield opportunity comScore sees is in the gaming space. Gaming has already been seeing an upward trend over the past few years and the pandemic has brought about changes in e-sports gaming and live streaming behaviors.
Over the past three years, total ad spending and partnership with e-sports has grown over 40% while time spent on viewing videos has increased around 200%. comScore believes there is good opportunity in the measurement of gaming and live-streaming audiences.
Outlook
Looking ahead, comScore remains optimistic but expects revenues to be impacted by ad spending in movies. The company also expects short and long-term benefits from new agreements and partnerships signed during 2020.
Click here to read the full transcript of comScore Q3 2020 earnings conference call