Audience Engagement
1 min read

Millennial publisher Mic.com says comScore data showing a shrinking audience is wrong

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Mic.com recently announced it was, like many digital publishers, “pivoting to video.”

In the meantime, readers appear to be pivoting away from its website. At least that’s what web traffic tracker comScore says.

But Mic executives say comScore’s data is way off the mark. In fact, Mic argues it now reaches over 70 million people each month and that its internal numbers keep going up.

“ComScore accounts for about 10% of Mic’s actual audience, so we really don’t take that number very seriously,” said Mic president Jonathan Carson.

Mic says there are straightforward explanations for the massive measurement gap. Mic, like many web publishers, has focused more on ‘distributed content’ rather than its own website. Over the past few years, companies ranging from BuzzFeed to Business Insider have embraced pushing content out to various social networks rather than trying to bring everyone to their own websites.

In an age when content is distributed through many pipelines, this notion that comScore doesn’t capture the whole picture has been raised by other digital publishers —  including Business Insider  — and comScore itself acknowledges that it doesn’t track key sources of viewership including Facebook video.

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