Now It’s a Race: ComScore Adds Up Web, Mobile and App Eyeballs for the First Time

Big news for Web publishers whose users are increasingly visiting them on their phones: They’re going to start getting credit for those eyeballs, via a new scoring system from comScore.

How much that credit is worth is an open and important question for Web publishers. Because right now most of them have to offer advertisers a very steep discount on mobile eyeballs — as much as 80 percent off of desktop rates. But addressing that problem will take some time, and at the very least this is an important first step. And for some sites and services that exist predominantly on mobile sites, the new comScore ratings are going to be a big help. Because they’ll help them justify their pitch — hey, we may not be that big on the Web, but we’re huge on phones — to advertisers.