ComScore, GSMA urge adoption of mobile ad tagging

The effectiveness of mobile advertising is still in question, with comScore, a market research firm, calling again on publishers and media agency trade bodies to make greater use of the firm's Mobile Media Metrics (MMM) service.

ComScore has linked up with the GSMA to persuade members of the Association of Online Publishers (AOP) to tag their sites with comScore's mobile analytics tools free of charge. They have also involved members of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), some of which have complained about the MMM service not meeting their expectations a year after its launch.

The aim behind this renewed effort to measure the value of mobile ads is more targeted at mobile Internet access by Wi-Fi users. The problem appears to be integrating this web traffic with current MMM data generated from mobile operators' logs. The aggregated mobile data traffic is used to help major brands and media planners with booking mobile advertising campaigns.

However, there appears to be many hurdles to monitoring when a mobile ad is viewed by a handset user. For example, the commercial restrictions that Apple places on its handset distributors limits operators from disclosing data on iPhone subscriber usage. "When you also take into account that the iPhone doesn't accept third-party cookies, it effectively leaves the networks blind," Paul Goode, comScore's vice president of industry relationships in Europe, told New Media Age.

ComScore's MMM is also said to have only a limited ability to monitor Research In Motion's BlackBerry users due to embedded security, and media agencies have complained about being unable to measure data by other handset types.

Goode added that using comScore's tags would help MMM provide the detail that many brands were looking for. "When enough publishers do this, we can start to de-duplicate the overlap between 3G usage [MMM data] and Wi-Fi usage [publisher data] to make a more accurate assessment of overall usage."

For more:
- see this NMA article (sub. req.)

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