Comscore says it knows what you’re watching, but that’s kind of its job.

The most popular metrics and ratings company not named Nielsen announced a new “personification” methodology that’ll go live in October, which will measure viewing habits at the individual level, not just households.

• In other words, it will be able to tell what you’ve been watching on the tube, not your sister, boyfriend, or golden retriever. The methodology will only be available for Comscore’s national, cross-platform reporting, but the company said it’ll be available more broadly within a year or two.

As the ever-shifting media landscape evolves, Comscore believes its new measurement tool will help it push past Nielsen as the most important currency traded among media buyers and networks.

Previously, Comscore had been pulling data from Nielsen’s “Portable People” meters, which rely on literal microphones that its panel participants wear so the company could hear (and therefore track) their viewing habits. Now, Comscore will be getting this type of info through math, specifically, good old-fashioned statistics.

Easy as 1, 2, 3

Here’s how it will work: Comscore gets viewership data from TV providers—an audience of roughly 35 million households that subscribe to Dish, Cox, Charter, DirecTV, Spectrum, Comcast, and AT&T’s U-verse.

For instance, Comscore knows from this data that a Comcast subscriber at a specific zip code in Brooklyn was watching ESPN on September 20 at 9pm. To know what programming they were watching, Comscore has to then find out what ESPN was airing at 9pm, explained Michael Vinson, the company’s chief research officer, to Marketing Brew.

• The company also gets connected TV data (roughly 7 million smart TVs) from Inscape and Samba, which collect what viewers are watching through automated content recognition (ACR), technology that tracks and measures what’s being aired.
• Audiences can opt out, but a “fraction of a percent” take advantage of that, said Vinson.

All of this is then merged with data sets from Experian’s Consumer View, which provides details like the age, gender, and number of people in a household.

Together, this data helps Comscore infer what someone was watching. Because Comscore knows which boxes belong to which households, it knows it is statistically most likely that Ryan (male, 26) was watching a broadcast of Monday Night Football, not Ryan’s roommate Christine (female, 27).

“Households don’t watch television, people do,” said Vinson. Between taking audience data into account and knowing the individual household makeup, the company can “infer which people are the ones driving a viewing.”

Click here for the full story.—RB

Fancy-schmancy truffle hot sauce brand Truff made its marketing strategy even fancier yesterday, rolling out its first out of home (OOH) activation in Philadelphia.

• Truff’s first foray into OOH is...wait for it...a Philly cheesesteak competition.
• Two static billboard placements in Philadelphia's Center City prompt viewers to simply fill in the blank online: “_____ has the best cheesesteak in Philly.”
• The cheesesteak maker with the most votes will receive $10,000.
• Fans are also encouraged to debate the topic on social with #TRUFFBestPhilly.

Origin story: Truff isn’t from Philly, but some of its employees are. “The topic of who has the best cheesesteak was almost political to them,” Truff’s marketing director, Michelle Gabe, told Marketing Brew. Those conversations led to the idea for the campaign, as the team realized heated debate often leads to social media engagement.

Zoom in

Since the folks behind the viral @sauce IG account rolled out their first Truff hot sauce in 2017, Truff’s in-house marketing department has been tasked with expanding outside the Instagram account that spawned the brand and into other channels.

• Behind social, its second-most-popular marketing channel is podcast advertising—you can hear its ads on pods such as The LadyGang and Chatty Broads.
• It started testing out podcast ads in November 2020, and by summer 2021, the brand was ready to expand into something new.

Why OOH? Gabe told us Truff chose to dive into OOH because of its potential for social media integrations, aka Truff’s strongest channel. “We wanted to create a campaign that speaks to our presence on social and cause a lot of buzz and word of mouth,” Gabe said.

+1: Period underwear brand Thinx also combined OOH with social media recently, rolling out its first digital billboard with help from Instagram and TikTok influencers.—PB

The Ad Council released a PSA yesterday aimed toward young adults, aka the demographic currently posting the lowest Covid vaccination rates among the 18+ crowd in the US.

• Per CDC figures, 50.9% of adults between the ages of 18 and 24 are fully vaccinated. And that number jumps to 55.1% for those between 25 and 39. For comparison, 64.2% of people in their 40s have gotten both jabs, and all age groups above that have even higher rates.

Its PSA, which the Ad Council released in partnership with an organization called the Covid Collaborative, shows people sitting down with unvaccinated loved ones—friends, siblings, significant others—to try to understand their hesitations and encourage them to think about getting the shot. According to Deutsch LA, the agency behind the ad, none of the people featured in it are actors.

Interestingly, the ad doesn’t indicate if any of the conversations led to a change of heart. The campaign directs viewers to getvaccineanswers.org, a hub of vaccination information.

“Just the mention of the vaccine creates tension—across political lines, between friends, and within families,” Eric Kaufman, SVP and creative director at Deutsch LA’s production studio, told Marketing Brew. “We knew this content couldn’t be more of the same argument culture that we see every day. Any message that felt like a confrontation or judgment would be dismissed by our younger audience.”

Zoom out: The campaign is the latest installment in the Ad Council’s massive vaccine education campaign, which debuted in February. According to the nonprofit, the push has received $200 million in media support and publicity to date.—MS

There are a lot of bad marketing tips out there. These aren’t those.

Tests: Do you know what A/A testing is? If not, this explainer has you covered.

SEO: Read the Search Engine Journal’s State of SEO report, because they should know.

Talk it out: Companies should be talking to their employees about these three topics, writes Entrepreneur.

Your DMs are flooded: Your schedule doesn’t have to be. ManyChat’s Instagram Automation replaces tedious manual effort in answering FAQs, boosting engagement, and more. Better yet, they won’t make your brand sound like a cyborg. Never miss another DM again.*

Mark your calendar for Commerce+: On October 13, the most talked-about brands will be dishing deets on how to influence the next generation, sell globally, and grow boldly at Shopify’s Commerce+ livestream event. Register for free here.*

^{*This is sponsored advertising content}

Stat: Just 38% of consumers are familiar with the term “metaverse,” according to a report from Wunderman Thompson. Now do Web3 and Solana.

Quote: “Throughout the summer, municipal and corporate advertisements have conflated the reopening of nightclubs with the reopening of hearts and minds, as if through sheer wishfulness we might manifest some kind of euphoric restitution for the losses we’ve endured.”—Carina del Valle Schorske for the New York Times.

Read: The Verge explores why iPhone 13 deals are “extra aggressive” this year.

Catch up on a few Marketing Brew stories you might have missed.

• So, you ran a Super Bowl ad. Was it worth it?
• Thinx’s first digital billboard
• What to know about iOS 15