GSMA has been an active body for the mobile carriers esp. outside US. On Monday, he GSMA and a task force comprising Telefonica, Vodafone, Orange, T-Mobile International and 3, today unveiled the results of a feasibility study examining mobile audience metrics that will enable media and advertising agencies, brands and publishers to deliver better mobile advertising campaigns. The study, part of the GSMA’s Mobile Media Metrics programme, has created a measurement process for mobile browsing that respects the privacy of mobile users and provides rich planning information for the media and advertising communities.
The results of the study, based on a sample of anonymised data from UK mobile operators, reveal that operator sites continue to command the largest audiences, with 68% of UK mobile users visiting operator portals. Google is the top off-portal destination and Facebook is the top mobile site by time spent browsing, with other social networking sites featuring strongly. In addition to the top sites, a total of 167,648 mobile Internet sites have been measured during the feasibility study.
Top Mobile Sites vs. Top Internet Sites, December 2008 UK Mobile Phone Users (sample of UK Operators) and UK Internet Users* Top 10 Mobile Sites Top 10 PC Internet Sites 1 Mobile Operator Sites Google Sites 2 Google Sites Microsoft Sites 3 Facebook.com Yahoo! Sites 4 Yahoo! Sites Facebook.com 5 BBC Sites EBay 6 Apple Inc. Sites BBC Sites 7 Microsoft Sites AOL (inc. Bebo) 8 Sony Online (inc. Sony Ericsson) Amazon Sites 9 Nokia Ask Network 10 AOL (inc. Bebo) Wikimedia Foundation Sites
Source: GSMA Mobile Media Metrics; comScore Media Metrix (PC data)
The output of the GSMA’s Mobile Media Metrics programme will allow brands, publishers and agencies access to rich, aggregated user behaviour data, enabling comparison with other media. For example, mobile users accessing Facebook spend an average of 24 minutes per day on the site, similar to the 27.5 minutes spent by PC users. Mobile users on Facebook averaged 3.3 visits per day versus 2.3 visits per day by PC users.
Mobile is used consistently throughout the whole day, but the early morning (7-10am) is the key day part for mobile, accounting for 22% of total mobile minutes browsed, compared with only 11% of total minutes browsed by PC Internet users in the same day part. Mobile can therefore act as an extension to media such as the Internet and TV, while it reinforces other early morning media, such as radio and newspapers.
The real value comes in the combination of aggregated site popularity and user behaviour data with independently collected demographic information, which enables more effective targeting of campaigns. Mobile is confirmed as a strong youth medium with 48 per cent of users between 18-34 years old, compared to 40 per cent for the fixed Internet and 29 per cent for the TV audience (source: BMRB’s TGI). Mobile is also more skewed towards men, who represent 63 per cent of total users compared with 53 per cent for the fixed Internet.
US carriers should take a close look at this initiative and learn. Will this work together be enough to stave off Google?