Vice President, M:Metrics<\/span>
<\/p>\n
How has your focus evolved over the 3 years that the company has been around? <\/strong> I know M:Metrics provides a number of different information services. Please take us through the services and tools that M:Metrics offers today.<\/strong> \u2022 First, we track all the handsets on the market and all the specific technical capabilities of each.<\/p>\n \u2022 Second, we have auditing spider-type tool that tracks all of the content that is available on the operator portals. We know all of the TV packages, the games, are there ring-back packages, the pricing, etc. So we understand what is on offer.<\/p>\n \u2022 Once we have these two things, then we run a survey over the internet which tracks who are mobile phone owners, their handsets, their operators, and their consumption and usage of mobile content. Which countries to do you cover with MobiLens?<\/strong> We survey about half a million users, the report comes out monthly, and there is also an online interface into the data. For this we get a group of people \u2013 at least 1,000 per country – all smartphone users, and we install software on their handset that tracks their browsing, their messaging, their application usage, and soon we will track multimedia usage.<\/p>\n This information is all downloaded to us on a daily basis \u2013 we get to see every URL they have visited, every click path, every text message they have sent. So this doesn’t rely on recall, it is what they are actually doing. <\/p>\n This lets us look at things like session length, frequency, stickiness, all kinds of stuff. This is hugely granular information, on a subset of the browsing population. How is this information published?<\/strong> For example, here is a list of the top mobile sites in the UK last month. M:Metrics recently made a press release with AdMob about the demographic profile of their audience. What tool do you use to collect this?<\/strong> We put banners on the site, and when a respondent clicks on the banner, we ask them to take a very short survey, using their phone. We collect basic demographics \u2013 age, interests, – actually whatever people want. This service can also be used by an ad network. As you mentioned, we worked with AdMob to run this on their inventory of sites all across their network. They had lots of information about usage, this let them define the demographic composition of their network, and therefore do better targeting of advertising.
“Measurement<\/strong>” and “Metrics<\/strong>” are topics that agencies and advertisers discuss frequently, and are often cited as key requirements for the growth of mobile advertising. M:Metrics<\/strong> is a company that is completely focused on this area. In this interview, we speak to Paul Goode<\/strong>, VP of New Products to understand what these services are, what information is available, and what are some of the key trends he sees.<\/p>\n
\nHello Paul. To start, could you tell us what is the overall company mission for M:Metrics?<\/strong>
\nWe are a mobile media measurement company. Our job is to bring clarity and transparency to what is happening in the world of mobile to enable media owners, advertisers and everyone in the value chain to better exploit mobile as a media channel. We also work with operators and handset manufactures to help them understand strategy, branding and product design.
<\/p>\n
\nOur initial products were focused mostly on usage of mobile content services. We have been evolving to have services that are more specific to supporting advertising. There are things that marketers and advertisers need that handset manufacturers don’t \u2013 such as who is advertising what and where. And the understanding of demographics needs to link back into the standard media planning tools that are used for other media.
<\/p>\n
\n
The core service that we have had for the past 3 years is MobiLens<\/em><\/strong>. It consists of three parts.<\/p>\n
\nThe survey is dynamically generated according to the capabilities of the handset the person has and the services that are offered by their operator.
<\/p>\n
\nAt the moment US, UK, Italy, France, Germany, and Spain. Some others to follow.
<\/p>\n
\n
<\/p>\n
\nWhat about your service that is based on client software in the handset?<\/strong>
\n
That service is called MeterDirect<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\nThis is a subscription service, and there is an online interface where you can go and examine all the data.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n
The product is called M:Audit<\/em><\/strong>, and it\u2019s a customized, site-centric survey, to enable a site owner to learn more about who is visiting their site.
<\/p>\n
\nThis provides the site owner with a more detailed understanding of the visitors to their site. This information in turn would let them eliminate ad wastage and increase the value of their ad inventory.
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Just recently we announced M:AdTracker<\/strong><\/em>, a subscription service which looks at the actual ad inventory that is being served on mobile.
<\/p>\n
Yes, we recently announced that our information will be integrated into TGI<\/strong>, which is the standard for media planning in much of the world. So information about mobile as a media channel will be available on the desktop, in the same tools that media planners currently use to evaluate expenditure of campaigns across the other media channels.
There have been obstacles to achieving this around transparency and measurement. We are trying to remove those obstacles so people can effectively plan, target and track ads, and this will be a more effective medium.