Reston-Based Company Tracking Data, Discussions on COVID-19

A Reston based global company is using data to try and track COVID-19 discussion around the world.

Comscore, headquartered at 11950 Democracy Drive, helps clients “evaluate media across platforms” to boost audience engagement, according to its website. Major clients for the company include Pepsi and Oracle.

The company recently expanded its efforts to provide “insights” into COVID-19.

Those insights range in data from things like media consumption during the outbreak to surging levels of in-home data usage.

Now that people are staying home, the company announced that as of today (Tuesday, March 24,) data use by gaming consoles is up 48% along with a 44% data use rise by in-home speakers.

When it comes to media consumption, roughly 3.2 million people checked governmental websites including the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control. Between March 9115, roughly 24.4 million people logged on to these websites. That’s over a 670% increase from the first few days of January, according to Comscore.

Due to recent changes in commerce, Comscore also noticed changes in other industries like retail and manufacturing.

“In looking at total digital visits to an aggregate of Amazon, Walmart and Target’s sites, we saw 779 million visits the week of March 9-15,” the company’s website said.

According to a blog recently released by Comscore, studies show that people are turning to local news when they face uncertainty during the pandemic.

“We need local news in times of crisis to learn about the changes impacting our daily lives,” Rachel Cooper-Blank, the author and company’s lead account manager, wrote in the blog.

Going forward, it seems that Comscore will continue to track changes to the economy and people’s habits during the pandemic.

Reston Now reached out to Comscore for comment and is awaiting a response.

Photo via Comscore/Facebook