Comscore’s Melinda Gladnick On Why True Cross-Platform Measurement Is Still Harder Than It Looks
“I always joke that we skipped the easy part. We went straight to measuring people, not households,” says Melinda Gladnick, SVP of Product Management at Comscore. “That was the right long-term move—but whether the market was ready for it is another question.”
We sat down with Melinda to talk about how Comscore Campaign Ratings (CCR) has evolved to meet modern standards, why advertisers still buy in silos, and what it really takes to bring every screen under one roof.
ALAN WOLK (AW): Advertisers have been chasing true cross-platform measurement for years. What gap in the market led Comscore to build CCR, and how is it different from other solutions?
MELINDA GLADNICK (MG): When Comscore merged with Rentrak, we suddenly had this huge digital footprint and a massive linear TV dataset. Clients immediately said, “When are you going to do cross-platform?”
At first, we were creating custom reports for clients who wanted to know how their linear and digital campaigns worked together. But it was obvious we were sitting on the right data to solve a bigger problem. The fundamental decision we made early on was to measure persons, not households. Advertisers want to reach people, not addresses.
AW: Fast-forward to now. Between streaming, linear, and digital, everyone’s data is everywhere. What does CCR do that helps bring it together?
MG: We wanted CCR to be comprehensive—not just across platforms but across ad formats in one view. That matters because advertisers don’t buy in perfect silos, but the industry still operates that way.
Talk to any major agency and you’ll still find separate teams for linear, social, and digital. They all say they’re “video-agnostic,” but they’re not—at least not operationally. CCR forces those teams to look at data side by side. Suddenly a linear buyer is looking at digital results for the first time, or a digital planner is seeing linear performance. It’s created this unexpected education loop where people actually start asking, “What were you trying to do—and did it work?”
AW: That sounds like a cultural shift as much as a technical one.
MG: There are long-standing workflows—third-party systems, legacy buying platforms—that keep people in their lanes. Changing that takes investment and time.
Everyone’s racing toward cross-platform, the focus is shifting and I am starting to see momentum build and the willingness to put in the time to enact that change.
AW: How do you actually get to that single view—seeing everything under one pane of glass?
MG: Our advantage is the scale of our linear TV footprint, which also extends locally. When we launched local CCR two years ago, we found that most local advertisers had almost no visibility into how their campaigns were performing. By linking set-top box and ACR data with digital exposures—tagged or tagless—we can finally give them a unified, de-duplicated reach number. It’s hard work, but we decided early on to tackle the hardest part first.
AW: What surprises clients most when they start seeing CCR data?
MG: Two things. First, deduplication. Everyone assumes their buys are perfectly efficient until they see the overlap between platforms or between local and national TV. When they see it laid out, there’s usually a “wow” moment.
Second, realism about audience size. If you’re targeting a niche segment that’s one percent of the U.S. population, you can’t expect reach numbers that look like a mass campaign. CCR helps quantify that and set expectations.
We’ve also had a lot of local station groups use CCR to prove their real footprint. They tag their own inventory, combine data from their sites and stations, and then show advertisers who they’re reaching. It’s helped them win business from brands that never realized how strong local reach could be.
AW: What have been the biggest technical hurdles?
MG: Measuring walled gardens at the same standard as everyone else. You want to measure Meta or YouTube with the same consistency as a local publisher. That’s where our digital panel becomes critical. It lets us model and verify what’s happening when we don’t have full visibility.
The goal is to make sure every platform—no matter how closed—can be represented accurately within the same system. That’s the way cross-platform data becomes actionable.
AW: Looking ahead, what’s the next frontier for you and the team?
MG: Education and accessibility. Advertisers already juggle dozens of vendors and dashboards, so we’re focused on reducing friction—getting the right data into the systems they already use.
We’re integrated with platforms like The Trade Desk, Adobe, and Basis, so users can see CCR data where they’re already buying and planning. The theme is accessibility: getting reliable, person-level measurement into the workflows where it can make an impact. Because at the end of the day, it needs to be easy to use.
