comScore has acquired MdotLabs, a 14-month old company with expertise in detecting non-human traffic online. The acquisition is part of an effort to clean up comScore’s online traffic data.
The company says MdotLabs’ technology will help isolate bots, click farms, and pay-per-view networks. These sources could skew the results comScore offers clients and the public.
The company provides a variety of analytics-based services including measurement of digital audience analytics and optimization of digital marketing campaigns. Its major clients are large tech companies like Yahoo, LinkedIn and AOL.
But comScore also provides a wealth of data on subjects like online traffic trends and local search usage. And these are often accessible and helpful to the small business community.
The information can be invaluable when planning your digital marketing strategy or deciding on the most effective kind of digital advertising. It can even inform decisions about how to best optimize your company website.
MdotLabs uses signal processing, statistics, machine learning, and applied math to weed out non-human traffic and other deceptive traffic generation techniques online.
In a statement announcing the acquisition of MdotLabs, Serge Matta, President and CEO of comScore, said:
“We believe that the combination of Mdot’s technology with our existing NHT detection methods will deliver a significant advancement in addressing this important issue, providing even greater transparency and more accurate metrics around campaign performance.”
Matta said comScore believes non-human traffic may make up in excess of 50 percent of traffic in any given marketing campaign.
Timur Yarnall, CEO and founder of MdotLabs, said in the release his company would be an asset for comScore customers and others relying on the company’s data:
“comScore sits at the center of the digital media buying and selling communities, and we believe our technology can play a big role in helping both sides mitigate the deleterious effects of NHT and bring confidence to those investing in digital.”
Small business owners rely in part on comScore data about local search, mobile trends or the effectiveness of social media sites for reaching certain audiences.
This data could influence your decision about what channels will best reach your target audience. It could even influence your understanding of the kinds of devices customers are likely to be using to access your website.
comScore already uses some non-human traffic detection methods in its Media Metrix and Campaign Essentials products. And presumably this technology is also used to improve the data the company offers to the public in its many reports and white papers.
But comScore says the integration of MdotLabs technology will create a multi-layered approach to creating data that is less influenced by non-human traffic generation techniques.
Terms of the deal were not announced. Yarnall, co-founder Dr. Paul Barford and the entire MdotLabs team will be joining comScore as part of the acquisition.
