Mobile advertising measurements still lack standardization

The telecom industry is getting closer to the integration of content and services across multiple screens, including mobile phones, PCs and TVs. Some of that content will include advertising, delivered in a personalized and targeted way enabling service providers to get a bigger piece of the advertising market by selling advertisers more effective cross-platform packages.

For now, however, advertisers look at these platforms separately. The tools to allow more advanced advertising are in early stages. Vendors are integrating advertising support and management into existing equipment architectures, but service providers also need proof points showing that advanced advertising methods can actually work with commonly-applicable metrics that don't confuse advertisers.

The mobile industry has been an early proving ground for techniques to measure effectiveness, and there are already many sources of mobile advertising metrics: Companies that serve ads and support ad management, like Ad Mob, Millennial Media or Bango; analytics groups, such as M:Metrics or comScore; or trade associations, such as the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA), the Media Research Center (MRC), the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association (CTIA) or the GSM Association (GSMA).

Yet, there isn't a common set of standards, and that may be holding back the progress of mobile advertising, let alone setting a foundation for multi-screen advertising. "I think the biggest barrier is industry consensus on measurement variables, their definition, how should they be measured and a third party that can audit and verify the numbers being put out by various vendors in a systematic and timely fashion," said Chetan Sharma, founder and president of Chetan Sharma Consulting.

For its part, the MMA is in the midst of trying to develop a common set of mobile advertising metrics to serve as an independent industry reference point.

Mike Wehrs, president and CEO of the MMA, said the association late last year created a "Mobile Measurement Ad Currency Definitions Document" to help identify measurement tools for establishing standard metrics. Since then, the MMA also has partnered with the IAB and the MRC to create a set of "Global Mobile Measurement Guidelines," a document scheduled for release next year.

"These guidelines will specify the technical requirements for counting mobile Web impressions and click-throughs, and SMS and MMS messaging impressions and click-throughs," Wehrs said. Eventually, reach, targeting capability, engagement and resulting transactions also will be addressed.

And, as rich media mobile ads evolve, the MMA will "move beyond the traditional ways to measure engagement and use the unique attributes of the phone (location, accelerometer, touchscreen) as new dimensions in measuring engagement," Wehrs said.

Meanwhile, other groups are pushing different approaches. The GSMA, for example, worked with its core constituency of European mobile carriers on studying mobile advertising and creating a data repository of traffic patterns and ad effectiveness.

Also, consultant Sharma has envisioned a framework of the five areas most critical to measuring mobile ad ROI: reach, engagement, targeting, viral and transactions. This framework would require measurements for not only current categories such as unique users, numbers of impressions and click-through rates, but also other direct response measurements such as cost-per-click, cost-per-lead, cost-per-sale and others. In addition, for rich media ads, information about completion rates, time-viewed, interaction rates, replay counts and viral distribution would be needed. Also important, Sharma said, are branding measurements, such as brand awareness, ad recall, message association, purchase intent and resulting purchases.

That goes well beyond CTR, the traditional Internet ad measurement, which Sharma said "doesn't completely capture the depth and breadth of capabilities and opportunities that the mobile medium presents. One needs to look beyond online metrics to rethink mobile metrics."

Sharma said he thinks the framework could be applied to the evolving Internet ad world as well as the embryonic advanced TV advertising realm.

The MMA's Wehrs likes Sharma's idea, though he questions its practical application. "Mobile has the most things measurable of any advertising channel. A bottoms-up, highly specific set of tools [like Sharma proposes] would allow effectiveness tracking at a level of accuracy that when coupled with mobile's inherent measurability would be an excellent tool for brands." However, he said having disparate measurement systems feeding the framework could challenge its usefulness.