The GSMA announced the launch of their mobile media metrics tool, delivered by Comscore, at the London Imax yesterday.
It was certainly a popular event, and massively over-subscribed by all accounts. So I went along ready to be impressed.
Well, to their credit, the GSMA have managed to get the five main UK mobile operators, O2, Vodafone, Orange, T-Mobile and 3UK, into one space, sharing usage data to allow robust reach and frequency numbers to be accessed by media planners.
That’s useful. We can see that 16 million people in the UK accessed the web via mobile devices (by which they mean phones – small screens, limited ease of use, but always on and always with you).
And we can see where they go: Facebook, Google, the operators, the BBC… (Actually, when you look at the figures in a bit more depth and examine page views and minutes of use, you find that mobile media is really little more than Facebook Media, but that’s another story.)
And, because GSMA have negotiated a survey of a section of mobile users we can even make some assumptions about the socio-demographics of mobile web site visitors. (Although these are assumptions and I believe will be open to some question.)
But. And it’s a very big but:
There is still no independent data. At the moment all the data comes from the operators. So you buy some media. And the operators will tell you whether or not it has been delivered.
For mobile media to have any credibility (and Michael Smith of the COI was quick to point this out yesterday) we do need to see independent campaign data such as that which is delivered by third party ad servers in “fixed” internet advertising.
Without that (and irrespective of whether you feel the heavy dominance of Facebook is an issue), it will be hard to justify serious spending on mobile media.
Jeremy Swinfen Green's YabaDabaDoo 