Remove comScore implementation

[defagos]

After comScore has been removed:

• Remove the player events which are not supported for TagCommander (e.g. buffering).
• Remove all comScore label stuff.
• Remove SDK dependencies everywhere.
• Update the documentation.
• Update Play SRG transmitted values, see https://github.com/SRGSSR/playsrg-ios/issues/73

[defagos]

We won't remove the SDK yet. As Markus Gubler said on the SRG Analytics channel:

Hi Samuel, please leave the libraries in place for the moment. Ironically comScore will become the market currency tool for streaming but without web analytics funtionalities in the future. This means that for the moment we will leave the tags in place in will subesquently move the measurement to Tag Commander. I would wait to do this until we don't rely on the comScore numbers anymore internally (from December onward). Is this understandable?

[defagos]

Still was not possible in December. I contacted Markus Gubler again:

I talked to comScore about how to move the comScore measurement to Tag Commander. They claim that this is not so easy to do. Nevertheless, I want to try this. But as I don’t have any more information at the moment, we should leave the comScore tags in place as they are.

[vpdn]

Can we remove comscore now? We're seeing some crashes in the comscore library that would be resolved by just removing comscore altogether.

[vpdn]

Also, wasn't that the whole point of having some tag commander to be able to get all this distribution magic off the clients? If we have to keep comscore and webtrekk indefinitely anyways, we may as well just integrate comscore & webtrekk directly and safe us another single point of failure that does nothing but proxying the tracking events to webtrekk.

[defagos]

@vpdn I share your thoughts. I will ask Markus Gubler again about this removal.

[defagos]

@vpdn We cannot remove comScore for the moment. Here is the detailed answer from Markus:

Hi all,

I was repeatedly asked, if you can remove the comScore libraries from the existing products. I absolutely understand your need and will to remove them!

Nevertheless the situation is complicated at the moment due to these reasons:

1. In the future, we will require 2 systems for streaming measurement. One for our daily work in internal multimedia research and one for the external market currencies. The reason for these 2 solutions is that the multimedia research is relying on a flexible analytics solution for in depth analysis and daily reporting, which can’t and will not be provided by a market solution. The market solution will be needed in the future to get a full picture and to include the streaming consumption into the official TV currency (thus resulting in more complete measurement, hopefully also ad revenue!). This will be done by SMDH, a Switzerland wide joint industry committee.

2. At the moment SMDH is still in its birth process, thus not really measuring anything or delivering any product. Nevertheless, it is already now clear that the technical supplier will be comScore in the future for the whole market (replacing Net-Audit) and will measure web, app and streaming consumption. Now SMDH and comScore have a very big interest to have the measurement of the SRG offers in place right from the beginning. As we have a very complete and accurate measurement and are in streaming one of the biggest players in Switzerland. So comScore is willing to cover the costs of the servercalls being sent even though we don’t have a contract with them and should actually by our previous contract remove the tags. So the SRG is depending on SMDH to proceed in order to profit from our comScore tags in place at the moment.

3. When comScore was in question for becoming the technology supplier for SMDH, they had to answer a whole list of questions, also about supporting tag managers. Back in early 2017 the answer was “yes”. Nevertheless they do not support server sided tag management. I had a phone call with their representative for the tags and he sent me a list of reasons why they don’t support this (see attachment). From comScore perspective of course they make sense but are still a pain in the ass for us, as they prevent us from using tag commander as we intended to!

In my eyes this leaves us 3 options for now:

1. Leave everything as it is at the moment. Simply don’t touch…
2. Deactivate the comScore measurement for the moment, as SMDH is still a couple of months away. But keep it so we can reactivate it. Not sure about how much work this would be for you though!
3. Evaluate the JavaScrip solution which is being proposed by comScore (see attachment). I don’t fully understand the consequences and feasibility for apps though.

Maybe you have other options which could be considered. I propose that we discuss this during our planned meeting in Geneva also with David.

I’m sorry for not being able to give you a clear answer about the future of the comScore tags, but that’s how it is at the moment.

Kind regards and have a nice weekend!

[defagos]

For the moment, the team decided not to touch anything. The workshop will probably shed some more light on the possibility (or not) to remove the comScore SDK.

[vpdn]

For our news app we have already removed the comscore related labels and are only sending webtrekk info. This can be reverted later in case that's required.

(Not sure whether tag commander is still of any use in the "new world"? If not maybe it could be dropped to safe one indirection).

[defagos]

Still useful in the new world indeed. For RTS, we plugged our recommendation engine (Peach) directly into TagCommander. I think such use cases will be more common in the future (and it would take us quite some time do perform the direct Webtrekk integration).

[defagos]

A quick update about the use of comScore as a replacement for NetMetrix in the future.

As discussed with Markus Gubler, as well as Stuart Wilkinson (swilkinson@comscore.com, technical contact) and Anthonia​ Jörlén (ajorlen@comscore.com, account manager probably) from comScore, we will not be able to use TagCommander as a proxy for comScore measurements. This solution will never be validated by comScore, and if changes are made in the future we would be responsible of complying with the new requirements.

The comScore SDK namely performs a lot of internal tracking which would be difficult to get right, and which would probably imply a lot of additional management in our analytics SDK. We wanted to have a look at the possibility to use TagCommander as a proxy to be more efficient, but in this case this would obviously create more work for us in the long term.

We will therefore keep the comScore SDK as a dependency of SRG Analytics. We are still running version 3, which is now deprecated. We will move to version 6 directly, which will be published during summer 2018 according to Stuart (mid-July). This version introduces several architectural changes for comScore, and allowed removes a lot of legacy stuff which still existed in versions up to 5. The SDK is an Objective-C wrapper, based on top of a core C++ library shared with the Android SDK.

comScore will inform us when the new SDKs are available. We should then plan the required migration work accordingly on our side.

[vpdn]

What kind of info will have to be sent to comScore and how does this affect our apps?

[defagos]

AFAIK we will send page views and streaming events. We will likely have to comply to new measurement conventions, though, but I doubt this will require additional integration work for apps.

We will do everything we can at the SRG Analytics level to completely hide the comScore dependency, as we currently do for Netmetrix (that also means removing everything comScore-related from our public API). If everything goes according to the plan™️, apps will probably only have to supply new comScore setup parameters at initialization time (virtual site or whatever).

[defagos]

According to the WWDC 2018 Platforms State of the Union, Swift 5 will only be released in 2019.

[Taopi]

@defagos

SMDH/ComScore has named a time frame for ComScore migration: 2018-09.15 till 2018-12-31.

Based on all the information I was provided with, I have gerneated a Wiki. In this Wiki you will fin implementation guides for iOS and Android. For streaming I have not recived any instructions so far, but will share them as soon as I do-

Maybe it is of help, to look at the Tag for CommandersAct I have activated for the POC we are running. In this POC there will be no streaming data, so the final Tag will be more complex. Also obviosly this tag is homepages (JavaScript) while we use the server sieded version, What is oubvios however is that no additional _tvcvars are needed, given the Code stays at this level of complexity.

We should coordinate on:

• Timing (which sprint can you dedicate to this update)
• Needed documentation
• Communication (this was a point of critique after the last sprint we had together).

[defagos]

Thanks for the info, we were not provided with any timeframe for the comScore migration. I'll pass the information along to our product owner so that the required work can be scheduled appropriately.

[vpdn]

I've already done the same for our SRF App teams.

[Taopi]

@defagos

NetMetrix will be replaced at the analytics library level by a new comScore SDK version Do you plan to remove the NetMetrix SDK (is this an sdk?)?

I am not sure, if we can do that. I will check, which tools we can remove once we implement the new ComScore SDK. In order to do so, I need a list of tool we collect data with using the letterbox. Can you help me complete the list? As far as I know, today we (Markus Gubler / Me) sent data to the following tools:

• TagCommander
• comScore
• NetMetrix
• Chartbeat (?)

[defagos]

Our analytics library currently sends data to:

• TagCommander (page views + streaming)
• comScore (page views + streaming)
• NetMetrix (page views)

We don't use Chartbeat on mobile.

Since Letterbox statistics are based on our analytics library, Letterbox streaming analytics are sent to TagCommander and comScore only (not NetMetrix). Any page displaying a Letterbox player is supposed to send the page view on its own, this is not done at the Letterbox library level.

[defagos]

Regarding your question about NetMetrix: We are not using any dedicated SDK (there is none available). I said replacing, because as far as I understand the goal is to replace what NetMetrix does with comScore. I therefore see no value in keeping NetMetrix code in the future.

[Taopi]

I will verify with SMDH if NetMetrix Code can be removed. I started a FAQs / open Questions on the Wiki, where I will provide the answer

[defagos]

We had a meeting with @Taopi and @ckuert on January 17th, 2019. Details are provided on a dedicated Confluence page, most notably for access to native SDKs.

[defagos]

We won't remove comScore SDK, as comScore want us to use their SDK. We will update to SDK 5, then 6.

This ticket can be closed.

[defagos]

The SMDH initiative has been discontinued. It is unclear whether or not streaming measurements are affected.

In the meantime, and if streaming measurements are affected, I created a feature/comscore-removal branch with comScore SDK entirely removed, and all improvements made on our feature/smdh branch. If everything is stopped, we should merge this branch, otherwise continue on our existing feature/smdh branch.

[defagos]

Streaming measurements are not affected. We continue with comScore V5 integration. Ticket closed again. The feature/comscore-removal branch can be deleted.