MWC 2009: GSMA Mobile Media Metrics on Mobile Advertising

0Remember last Mobile World Congress the GSMA announced a UK task force to study and examine the mobile audience for mobile advertising?  Well this year some details of the study have been published and they look interesting.

There are three parts of the study

1. Top Sites
2. User Behaviour
3. Demographics

Top Sites
68% of UK consumers visit operator portals. In addition to the top sites, a total of 167,648 mobile Internet sites have been measured during the feasibility study.

User Behaviour
1. Mobile users accessing Facebook spend an average of 24 minutes per day on the site – similar to the 27.5 minutes spent on the PC. Mobile users average 3.3 visits on to Facebook each day vs  2.3 visits on the PC.
2. Mobile is used the whole day
3. Early morning 7am to 1pm is a key part when 22% of total mobile minutes are browsed.

Demographics
1. Mobile is a strong youth medium. 48% of users are between 18-34 years old.
2. Mobile is also popular with men – 63% of users compared to 53% fixed Internet.

From the press release“Establishing a common system for mobile advertising will make it as easy for advertisers to run campaigns on mobiles as it is across traditional media such as television and radio. This marks a significant step forward in driving the credibility of mobile advertising,” said Tanya Field, Director – Mobile Data Group, Telefónica S.A.

“Mobile Media Metrics is vital to the development of Mobile Advertising industry,” said Frank Boulben, Director Commercial Strategy at Vodafone Group. “The GSMA has supported a solution which can be deployed by mobile operators in virtually every country and is based on ongoing collaboration with the leading advertisers and advertising agencies.”

 
“Mobile advertising is an innovative channel with solid future potential in terms of reach, targeting and message relevance. One of the key building blocks for the successful take-up of mobile advertising is a standardised measurement system for mobile media audiences allowing advertisers to make informed decisions on the ROI of their campaigns. The GSMA initiative will play a vital role in bringing all the necessary elements together to ensure an effective mobile audience measurement process is put in place,” said Ingo Schneider, Vice President Multimedia, T-Mobile International.

“We’re now in an era of less hype and more reality when it comes to mobile advertising. This Mobile Media Metrics initiative is a big step forward in making mobile advertising simpler to plan, buy, execute and measure. It will provide a clearer picture of the usage of mobile as a medium for the advertising industry and as brands invest more in mobile, it will help us to pass on even greater benefits to customers, such as choice, quality and ad-funded services,” said Steve Heald, Sales Director, Partner Channels, Orange UK.

“Network operators have long sought the independent verification which will allow them to monetise mobile Internet usage on their networks.  Media buyers have also been excited about mobile for years, but have never had access to the independent statistics to justify large ad spend; hopefully Mobile Media Metrics will change all this. 3 is very excited about the opportunity provided by this initiative and we look forward to helping media buyers generate a higher ROI through the use of mobile advertising,” said Neil Andrews, Head of Portal Advertising at 3 UK.

“Robust audience data is vital to the success of any medium, and Mobile Media Metrics represents a huge step forward for the industry. Once media planners start using the research to justify mobile advertising on schedules, we can expect to see the medium grow with well targeted cross-network campaigns” said Guy Philippson, CEO of IAB UK.“

ABCe is looking forward to working with the mobile industry to progress and ultimately deliver mobile measurement to the standards agreed by JICWEBS (The Joint Industry Committee for Web Standards in the UK and Ireland). Media planners, owners and buyers require trusted and transparent data to justify driving media budgets to mobile,” said Richard Foan, MD of ABC Electronic.

What we think?
Hmmm. I think the initiative behind this is great. The GSMA is taking a lead with mobile operators’ which is fantastic. But the results seem a bit lame so far. Everything above sounds plausible. Even too plausible. Mobile is growing. Mobile advertising is getting there but the sexiest thing on this press release was about the mobile in parallel to a newspaper because a lot of surfing is done in the morning.

If the GSMA can go into more details about this type of use pattern. The time of use and what is surfed. My guess first thing in the morning people check their email when they wake up out of habit –but it’s the detail and not the fluff that will make this initiative scale.

The use of Facebook is interesting – but what about the use of news sites. Is the TV still the source of breaking news or is it mobile? What advertisers want to know is where to locate ad spend and when to locate it.

So moving forward the metrics should be focusing on this.

Apart from that I do think it very interesting the way one of the first sentences is that users in the UK use the operator portals. Of course that is where mobile operators are hoping that the ad-spend will be going.