Comscore: 221 sites, and how crowded they already are

The pages are crowded before Comscore is counted

The median site where Comscore appears reached sixteen separate companies during the load, which ranks eleventh of 88 companies in this index, made 76 requests, ranking thirteenth, and carried four hosts classified as tracking, ranking fourteenth. Those three ranks agree with each other, which is the useful part: this is not one heavy outlier dragging a median around, it is a consistently busy population. Measurement tags travel with advertising stacks, and advertising stacks are made of many separate companies. Comscore itself is one name on that list, and by the count used here it is one of sixteen on the median page rather than the reason the page is busy.

Eleven companies reached before a consent choice was possible

On 213 of the 221 sites, 96.4 percent, at least one company was contacted before a banner could have been answered; eight sites had none. That share ranks eighteenth of 88. The median site had reached eleven companies inside that window, ranking eighth of 88 and level with eight others. Because the crawl counts how many companies arrived early per site and not which ones, this describes the pages Comscore is found on, not the timing of Comscore's own requests.

The set keeps growing after the window closes

On Comscore's 221 sites the median count of companies first seen after the consent window closes is two. That is a small number in absolute terms and a pointed one in context: these pages are not finished assembling their third-party set by the time the banner has been dealt with. Whether that reflects tags that wait, tags that are slow, or ad auctions that resolve late, this measurement cannot say. It records only that on the median Comscore site, two more companies appear later. It is worth reading against the banner coverage below: 183 of these 221 sites did put the question to the visitor, and the median one still gains two companies after it was asked.

Four in five carry a detected consent tool

A recognisable consent tool was detected on 183 of the 221 sites, 82.8 percent, or four in five, which is what a population of ad-funded publishers tends to look like. An IAB TCF consent tool was seen alongside 128 of them and OneTrust alongside 52, with Iubenda on two and Osano on one. Those counts should not be read as slices of the 183, since a site can carry more than one banner. The prominence of the IAB TCF framework here is the distinguishing detail: it is the format built for programmatic advertising.

Individual sites, from 34 companies down to seven

techcrunch.com reached 34 separate companies, all 34 inside the early window, with first contact at 82 milliseconds. time.com reached 26, 22 early, first contact 157 milliseconds. businessinsider.com reached 22, all early. indiatimes.com reached 30, twenty early. cnn.com reached seventeen, fourteen early, behind a OneTrust banner, and soundcloud.com fifteen, eleven early. globo.com is the counter-example: 36 companies, only three inside the window, first contact at 1,733 milliseconds. Also measured: uol.com.br sixteen, cnbc.com sixteen, speedtest.net eleven, go.com nine, accuweather.com seven.

Seen on the same pages

Companies most often contacted by the same sites. Co-presence only — the crawl records what arrived, not who called whom.

• GoogleTogether on 179 of these sites
• Amazon AdsTogether on 98 of these sites
• crwdcntrl.netTogether on 45 of these sites
• ChartbeatTogether on 44 of these sites
• CriteoTogether on 36 of these sites
• OneTrustTogether on 32 of these sites
• adnxs.comTogether on 31 of these sites
• fastclick.netTogether on 30 of these sites