These are interesting times for the online audience measurement business. Last week, Google announced the launch of Google Ad Planner and the enhancement of the functionality of Google Trends to provide audience measurement data across internet websites. comScore stock dropped by as much as 23% the day Google announced Ad Planner. So, how does this all work and what is happening in the world of mobile audience measurement?

The web audience measurement space uses three different methodologies for measuring audience data – user panels, publisher-based solutions and ISP traffic. Companies like Nielsen NetRatings and comScore use a vast panel of users that they have recruited (the latter boasts two-million-plus users worldwide), monitor their web browsing habits and chart trends. Hitwise uses its software installed in selected ISP networks to provide a network-based view of web traffic in a given market. Other tools, such as Alexa, place a tracking pixel on the publishers’ websites to measure web traffic. Tools such as Compete and Quantcast use a combination of user panels, publisher site tracking and ISP traffic to generate audience measurement data.

Different tools serve different purposes. comScore is useful for understanding the audience profiles of certain websites – e.g., unique visitors, demographic split, time spent, etc. Hitwise provides a competitive click-stream analysis across a wide range of sites.

Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land published an insightful review of Google Ad Planner at http://searchengineland.com/080624-104519.php.

“Google Ad Planner combines information from a variety of sources, such as aggregated Google search data, opt-in anonymous Google Analytics data, opt-in external consumer panel data, and other third-party market research. The data is aggregated over millions of users and powered by computer algorithms; it doesn’t contain personally-identifiable information.”

The principal goal of Google Ad Planner is to help media planners understand the traffic patterns of websites, which enables them to analyze, prioritize and deploy their ad spending more efficiently and effectively. Google Trends provides a subset of Google Ad Planner trend data for free.

The mobile web audience measurement space is evolving in a way that is similar to the development of the online metrics space. On the one hand, there are companies such as M:Metrics (being acquired by comScore) which employ user-panel data. On the other hand, AdMob and Bango provide mobile metrics based on the data aggregated from individual mobile websites that leverage their technologies.

A holistic understanding of mobile audience measurement is not possible without a detailed analysis of off-portal and on-portal traffic. Off-portal traffic can be further classified into mobile-optimized off-portal sites (such as www.m.facebook.com) and the open Internet (such as www.bbc.co.uk). AdMob and Bango provide information about off-portal publishers that use their technologies – i.e., mobile-optimized off-portal channels, which account for a subset of all mobile web browsing.

The need for holistic audience measurement will become increasingly valuable in the mobile web space. While it is critical for network operators to better understand the behavior of their users, advertisers and media buyers also need to comprehend mobile traffic patterns in order to target their ad spending in the mobile channels. Also, advertisers and media buyers expect audience measurement information for mobile that is comparable to what is now available for the online domain.

Network operators are key to unlocking the true value of mobile audience measurement. With the network traffic that they observe through their nodes, operators are in a unique position to correlate user demographic information with traffic patterns for the mobile Internet.

- Saurav Chopra

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Bytemobile’s Web Fidelity™ Service has won the 2008 Mobile Content Award for Enriching Search and Discovery from Visiongain, a leading telecommunications industry market research firm in the U.K. The competition featured awards in eight categories, with Gold, Silver and Bronze rankings in each category. Bytemobile’s Gold award for its category was presented at the Visiongain Mobile Content Awards & Conference 2008 on June 19 in London.

- Adrian Hall

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Building mobile applications is a different ballgame from building desktop applications. User behavior on mobile devices is very different, and this is most evident in web browsing. There are four primary differences between desktop and mobile web browsing:

1) Environment
Desktop browsing takes place in homes or offices when we are sitting comfortably in a chair. On the other hand, mobile browsing by definition happens when we are mobile: outdoors, waiting in line, etc. Our psychologies are completely different in these two environments. During mobile browsing, we have shorter attention spans, more distractions, less focus, and little patience.

2) Purpose
Desktop browsing often takes an exploratory feel. Mobile browsing is more pointed and often serves one of the following purposes:

• Finding a specific piece of information (like the time of the next train )
• Keeping ourselves synchronized with the world in real time (like stock prices and sports scores)
• Killing a small slice of time in our day by entertaining ourselves

3) Time
Desktop browsing sessions last from tens of minutes to hours and tend to be less restricted. Mobile browsing sessions last from tens of seconds to a few minutes and typically occur under time constraints (like until the next train arrives).

4) Interface
The industry has focused primarily on this difference and hence it is well understood.
It takes less effort to accomplish a task on a desktop with a full keyboard, a mouse and a large screen. The end result is that users complete larger, more complex tasks on the desktop while opportunistically executing smaller, simpler tasks on mobile devices.

Companies often build mobile applications by removing capabilities from desktop applications to make them lightweight enough to fit on mobile phones. Such an approach addresses the limitations of devices but fails to account for differences in browsing behavior itself. In effect, it accommodates only one difference of the four described above.

For mobile browsing to fulfill its potential, content owners, browser providers and device manufacturers will need to focus on the total user experience rather than features. All elements of the ecosystem will need to collaborate coherently to create an experience that addresses a different set of behaviors.

A frequently used sales adage is that when a customer walks into a hardware store asking for a two-inch nail, what he really wants is a two-inch hole. We need to be building and selling mobile holes, not mobile nails.

- Girish Wadhwani

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Have you ever sat in the economy-class cabin of an airplane and felt that your personal space was being invaded? That the person next to you was too big, or worse, he or she was both physically and mentally crowding your seat? As the flight progresses, the negative feelings grow stronger and the more agitated you become. Sound familiar? I am sure it has happened to us all. For me, it was last Thursday.

Using our mobile phones to access the Internet today can feel somewhat similar. It is as if something is holding you back. You are most certainly not in control. Your frustration and agitation levels rise. Trying to view a video, if you can do it at all, takes forever. Entering text into a form, often with key fields off the screen, can be an impossibly error-prone task. Or worse, you complete the form and then your input is rejected and you have to start over again. Quite frankly, the more you try, the more frustrating and annoying the effort becomes. You become cross with your device and your service provider for preventing you from doing as you wish — for crowding your space, for restricting your access. After one or two such experiences, you vow never again to travel economy class — it’s business class (at least) from now on!

For many users today, access to the mobile Internet is a poor if not nearly impossible task. It is incumbent on telecommunications service providers to make users’ experience exciting, reliable and responsive to their lifestyle needs. If we introduce them to the experience through the economy-class cabin, they will be reluctant to continue. Our challenge is to give every user a smooth, seamless, first-class experience at a personal level and entice them to keep coming back for more.

But the real excitement and change are yet to come. In truth, none of us knows what using the Internet on our mobile devices will ultimately be like. The full entrepreneurial spirit of the human race has yet to kick in. If we can deliver the Internet and give the user a business-class experience today, just think of the first-class experience that might follow. The mobile device is a unique personal accessory. It is both a fashion statement and a practical necessity. It is with us 24 hours a day; in fact, it may never leave our side.

Network operators actually have an unparalleled one-to-one relationship with every user. The question is how to use the knowledge from this relationship. Operators know how much their users spend and on what types of service. They know physically where they are; they know their likes and dislikes. The opportunities for new business partnerships, new business models and new ecosystem relationships are phenomenal. The mobile lifestyle is bringing people together like never before. As individuals, we are never far apart — just a phone call, email or text message away — and so it is with businesses and services that we use. In effect, we should all be just three or four clicks away.

The mobile internet industry is a key enabler of this new revolution. It is us and only us that can give the user a free upgrade from economy class to business class and eventually to first class.

- Graham Carey

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