The deal has Comscore and Matta pay respective penalties of $5 million and $700,000, while Matta will also pay another $2.1 million to reflect profits he made from selling company stock and other compensation. The executive is also banned from serving as the director or officer of a public company for the next 10 years. Neither party, however, is required to admit guilt.

Comscore stressed that it was under new leadership and had new internal procedures to prevent this from happening again. All the same, the settlement could spark uncertainty among many -- however irrational it might be. If Comscore couldn't be trusted to report its own finances properly, how do advertisers know the data they got was on the level? The same goes for market share estimates and other studies. It's unlikely that the data was tainted, but ad teams might be shy about relying on Comscore in the future out of an abundance of caution.