What The Jumpshot Closure Means for Earned Media Attribution

Team

Onclusive

Posted: In: Blogs

Last week, it was announced that the Avast subsidiary, Jumpshot, had ceased operations. The Jumpshot closure will be problematic for many marketing and PR tech vendors, which purchased consumer browsing data from Jumpshot and used the data as panels to create “attribution” models for marketing and communications campaigns. This “panel based” approach to attribution uses third-party data from providers like Jumpshot to infer earned media exposure. This approach to attribution is statistically invalid and vastly limits the insights which can be used for reporting and optimization.

Onclusive maintains PR Attribution™, a proprietary solution which we invented nearly a decade ago. Onclusive PR Attribution ™ does not rely in any way on third-party data providers like Jumpshot and is in no way impacted by the Jumpshot closure.

Some background on Jumpshot and browser plug-in data sources.

Avast developed Avast Antivirus in the early 90s. In 2016, Avast expanded it’s antivirus marketshare when it acquired competitor AVG Technologies. These platforms included a browser extension that would warn users before they visited a potentially dangerous website. Users who installed the plugin would, sometimes unknowingly, consent to have their browsing habits and data harvested and then later resold by Jumpshot to other companies. 

Avast claims to have over 435 million active users on over 100 million devices. Jumpshot was valued at ~$177 million as recently as July, 2019, but a mere six months later the company was shuttered.

On January 30th, 2020, Avast CEO, Ondrej Vlcek, announced that Jumpshot would be shut down immediately as “the data collection business is not in line with our privacy priorities as a company in 2020 and beyond.” 

How does this impact earned media attribution solutions?

The Jumpshot closure has affected many businesses which relied on Jumpshot data to power their earned media measurement solutions. However, since Onclusive never had any relationship with Jumpshot, there is no impact to Onclusive attribution metrics.

Onclusive does not and has never used Jumpshot as a source of data for PR Attribution™. 

Onclusive invented and pioneered the first true attribution approach for communications to demonstrate the real impact of earned and owned media. PR Attribution™ is built upon the largest newscrawler on the planet and leverages both direct and indirect attribution by combining website analytics and cookie-matching to produce the most accurate solution on the market. 

Some of the largest brands in the world leverage the Onclusive platform to attribute and optimize their communications, including Airbnb, 23andMe, Business Wire, and Experian.

For more information on PR Attribution™ or press inquiries, please contact us at info@onclusive.com