In
a move that could help the struggling mobile advertising market, the
digital media measurement firm comScore is making mobile-optimized
tagging available to publishers, a development that would allow
companies to tag mobile Web and application assets so that mobile
audiences can be accurately measured and tracked.
The
company hopes these tags will establish a measurement currency-much
like the TV ratings Nielsen provides-for the mobile advertising
industry, which has struggled to gain traction because of the difficulty
in tracking usage and audiences.
As part of
this effort, comScore has also announced a partnership with Bango, a
mobile analytics and billing company used by many of the most-trafficked
mobile sites. The partnership, comScore believes, will give them an
immediate lead in mobile audience measurements.
"Mobile
media consumption continues to accelerate, making a third-party
measurement solution critical for publishers and advertisers looking to
implement effective mobile strategies and ad campaigns," notes Mark
Donovan, senior vice president of mobile for comScore in a statement.
"With comScore's mobile-optimized tagging, publishers can accurately
demonstrate their mobile site's traffic and engagement levels to
advertisers looking to use the channel to reach and engage consumers,
providing the foundation for a more robust mobile advertising
environment."
Some programmers have already
welcomed the move. "We are pleased that comScore is partnering with
Bango to extend its unified measurement to mobile-optimized sites,"
notes Jack Wakshlag, chief research officer for Turner Broadcast System
in a prepared statement. "This is a positive step forward in mobile
audience measurement."
"Weather information has
one of the largest mobile audiences of any content category, making it
critically important that we at AccuWeather have access to the
most-trusted and complete mobile metrics available in the industry,"
added Robert Henry, director of strategy and planning at AccuWeather in a
prepared statement.
The new system, he
continued, would provide them with "insights that will be invaluable
when planning, executing and evaluating our mobile strategy."
Up
until now the highly fragmented mobile industry, which has a number of
different standards and thousands of different mobile devices, had
lacked a comprehensive, standardized metrics across all devices and
platforms. The new comScore tags would allow advertisers and content
producers to track usage across all major smartphone platforms, hundreds
of feature phones and next generation devices like tablet computers.
The tags would also provide data on unique traffic counts and page
views, giving the industry a better read on mobile audience behavior.
