RESTON, Va. and MT. LAUREL, N.J., April 27, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, and ImpactRx, a pharmaceutical insights company, today announced the availability of the comScore Physicians Panel Media Planning Tool, the only tool that provides health marketers and media planners with the key metrics needed to place online media buys that are targeted to physicians.  Similar to comScore Media Metrix, this solution provides behavioral data on physicians based on actual observed online visitation patterns in a format that enables marketers and media planners to gain the critical insights needed to develop effective media plans. The permission-based research panel complies with health privacy laws and regulations, and at no time is patient-identifiable information provided by physicians to comScore.

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"With the Internet becoming an extremely important part of physicians' professional communication, reaching physicians online has never been more crucial for the health care industry," said John Mangano, comScore vice president of health marketing solutions. "Until recently, the only information available on physicians' online usage habits was collected through surveys. However, as researchers, we know that people can hardly remember the sites they visited 24 hours prior, much less the amount of time they spent online or specific pages they viewed.  comScore's tool measures actual online visitation and can quantify observed behavior over time, without needing to rely on physicians recalling their online activities. Having that kind of insight into physicians' online behavior can help marketers optimize media plans and better engage with the medical community at large."

Comprehensive Data Set Shows Site-Level Information for Health Properties

The Physicians Panel Media Planning Tool forms part of the foundation of the comScore/ImpactRx Physician Behavioral Measurement™ solution and is based on comScore's proprietary permission-based panel methodology, which passively observes the actual online activity of a representative sample of U.S. physicians. Patient-level data are not collected at any time during measurement, in accordance with HIPAA regulations.

The tool contains visitation and engagement metrics provided quarterly on key categories and a broad listing of sites visited by physicians in these categories. The clear-cut format of the data set provides marketers with the greatest flexibility in looking for specific information, such as the rate of physician visitation to a specific category of sites or cross-visitation between two sites. Marketers and media planners alike can draw valuable insights from analyzing which properties attract the highest engagement from physicians and how these sites fare in relation to others. With the ability to easily find detailed information from the Media Planning Tool for particular media properties or site categories, media planners are able to create more effective media plans engaging doctors, and make more efficient use of their marketing dollars.

For more information about the Media Planning Tool or for more information on comScore Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Solutions, please contact John Mangano at jmangano@comscore.com.

About ImpactRx

Founded in October 2000, ImpactRx's physician networks are the source of an unprecedented intelligence capability for tracking the promotional initiatives of the pharmaceutical industry and for measuring their impact on physician prescribing behavior. Based in Mount Laurel, New Jersey, ImpactRx is a private company with investment financing provided by Mediphase Venture Partners (www.mediphaseventure.com), Oxford Bioscience Partners (www.oxbio.com), Merck Capital Ventures and Omega Funds.

About comScore Health and Pharmaceutical Solutions

comScore Pharmaceutical Solutions delivers in-depth information needed to understand the impact that brand, condition-specific, and health websites have on consumers' brand awareness, conversion, and patient compliance as well as insights into health care professionals' online usage. comScore's products deliver actionable insight to help refine consumer profiles, identify key alliances, optimize interactive marketing initiatives, benchmark against the competition and accurately measure the ROI of Web site and online marketing programs. For more information, please visit http://www.comscore.com/Industry_Solutions/Pharmaceutical.

About comScore

comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR) is a global leader in measuring the digital world and preferred source of digital business analytics. For more information, please visit www.comscore.com/companyinfo.

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SOURCE comScore, Inc.