ComScore to touch $200 million revenue in 2-3 years

BANGALORE (Reuters) - Internet market researcher comScore Inc (SCOR.O) plans to double its revenue to $200 million in the next two to three years as it looks to gain from faster international expansion and robust Internet advertising growth, its chief executive said.

The company, which tracks online consumer behavior, has seen its revenue jump more than 30 percent in each of the last three years and this growth is expected to continue, enabling comScore to grow faster than the overall market, CEO Magid Abraham said in an interview with Reuters.

"We have a number of tides that are lifting our boat," said Abraham, who helped found the company in 1999.

ComScore plans to boost non-U.S. revenue to 20 percent of its overall revenue in the next three years, he added. International revenue rose 75 percent in the second quarter from a year ago to form 14 percent of comScore's total revenue.

The company, based in Reston, Virginia, currently collects data in more than 35 countries.

Abraham said one of the key drivers was continued growth of Internet advertising in the United States and rest of the world.

According to research by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers, overall Internet advertising revenue rose 18.2 percent to $5.8 billion in the first quarter of this year. The market was worth $21 billion in 2007, the firms said.

ComScore, founded just before the Internet bubble burst, has been witnessing strong growth despite the prolonged weakness in the U.S. economy. It has posted earnings that have either beaten or met Wall Street expectations in every quarter since its market debut in June 2007.

Abraham pointed out the company recently increased its annual revenue outlook slightly and expects revenue to rise more than 30 percent in the second half of the year.

"That's based on continued confidence that our services will withstand the test of a bad economy."

TAPPING DIGITAL DEVICES

The company plans to tap the trend of consumers accessing the Internet from multiple devices to further boost its revenue.

Abraham sees a market opportunity in providing audience-measurement research on devices such as mobile phones, game consoles and televisions.

"It's not unrealistic to think that Internet usage on personal computers would be the minority at some point in the future, maybe five years down the line," said Abraham, who has a doctorate in operations research from MIT.

He expects revenue from research on digital devices, which accounts for less than 10 percent of comScore's business, to grow to about half of its business in five to seven years.

ComScore recently acquired M:Metrics, a provider of data on mobile phone usage.

ComScore's online audience-measurement studies typically give details of the size of audiences at websites, demographics within those sites and online buying preferences. This data is used by media and technology companies, as well as advertising agencies, to make business decisions.

Customers of comScore include Time Warner Inc's (TWX.N) AOL, Procter & Gamble Co (PG.N), Microsoft Corp, Yahoo Inc (YHOO.O) and Google Inc (GOOG.O).

One of its most widely respected services is a monthly analysis of U.S. search engine rankings that is closely followed by Wall Street analysts and investors.

Advertising agencies that use comScore's services include Omnicom Group Inc (OMC.N) and WPP (WPP.L).

Abraham estimates that ComScore, whose closest rival is Nielsen Online, has 65 percent of the U.S. audience measurement market. Nielsen Online is a unit of Nielsen Co, one of the world's largest market research firms.

(Editing by Himani Sarkar)