Is Anybody Home? More Mobility Hits Media Measurement Hard

Michael Hedges October 2, 2006

The hot prospect exciting the advertising people today is mobile media. They will not sleep until ads appear on your mobile phone. Their simple logic: the most desirable audience is not at home.
Go To Follow Up & Comments

Virtually every place on the planet is exploding with mobile phones, following the typical route of innovation – from fad, to fashion, to function. And the advertising people, true to their function, are driven to whatever medium is hot, new and happening. Media people – once proud to lead the pack – are in a tough game of catch-up.

While mobile phones are certainly the object of attraction, the real objective is far broader. Converging trends among varied populations – but very clearly among advertisers’ favorite targets – has led to a sharp rise in mobility. On the grand scale, people world-wide are more mobile world-wide. But on a micro-level, people are just not staying home.

Trend watchers spot consistent European and Asian consumer interest in mobile TV, while Americans still long for that “home theater room.” LogicaCMG reported in 2005 that world-wide 20% of all mobile phone users had downloaded content, be it a ring tone, music or video. For the utterly connected a Blackberry or Treo is utterly essential for email and the internet while mobile.

Measuring media within the context all of this mobility perplexes media researchers and their clients – advertisers and media providers. The center of gravity for media measurement has shifted. The home, even the work place, is becoming irrelevant to advertisers. The explosion of mobile phones as the touch point of choice has left advertisers and media researchers in a quandary.

Media research has for decades focused on at-home usage. If the questionnaires and interviews were not explicit something about conducting that interview in the living room or over the kitchen telephone seemed to imply – for those questioned – home-based activity. The responses have shown, with remarkable accuracy, at-home media use dwindling.  And away from home media use is difficult to measure.

The measurement debate continues to rages between those favoring media use and those wanting harder figures on media exposure.

It is true and incontrovertible that the audience most important to advertisers – under 45 years of age with money – spends the least amount of time sitting home. While this isn’t a new phenomenon in Europe (or much of the rest of the world) it is in the United States, where most of the incontrovertible principles of advertising and media (read: money) are conceived.

Eurostats’ 2004 time-use survey showed that Europeans get a full eight hours of sleep each day. No media use then. Paid work took up 5 to 5.5 hours per day. And from one-third to one-half of leisure time was spent in front of the tube.

So now the race is on to find and measure the mobile among us; the inference being young and wealthy, that being relative. Forget the idle, the old; even if rich, ads don’t shape what they buy.

The first leap, of course, came with those who measure radio audiences. Audience, itself, is a poor term as it implies sitting in front of a stage or piece of furniture.

Radio broadcasters’ competitive advantage has long been portability and mobility. Automobiles with built-in radios may well have saved them from televisions’ onslaught. Now mobile phones have built-in FM receivers and the greatest threat to radio broadcasters is the iPod. 

Measuring radio exposure with an equally portable device, like Arbitron’s Portable People Meter (PPM) and GfK’s Radiocontrol, opened an unexpected door. Not content to measure exposure to one medium, these systems quickly morphed into measurement platforms for radio, out-door advertising, mobile phone, mobile TV – essentially mobile anything containing a message.

An even more inclusive mobile measurement platform is now offered by M:Metrics – a US measurement company. This system monitors a slightly different set of mobile activity; including mobile radio and TV but also web browsing, music and game downloading and text messaging.  

Also generation ago, newspapers were read at the breakfast table each morning, work was silent and stationary, television programs were watched in living rooms every evening and portable telephones were size of an automobile. Media sage of that generation Marshal McLuhan observed at the time that Americans and Europeans differed in that “Americans are the only people to go out to be alone.”

“It is tempting to assume that TV will follow the example of radio and become a portable and mobile medium,” wrote EBU’s Technical Department Director Phil Lavan in 2004. “Football enthusiasts may salivate over this prospect, but are they really interested in viewing replays of goals on a 5 cm screen?”

American TV sports network ESPN announced the closure of its mobile virtual network for sports fans (September 29).

Media researchers, however, work for advertisers for whom perception is reality. Solutions for measuring the entire range of mobile media is largely at hand – as in hand-held. Ipsos, another media measurement company, wants to hand over a special “smart phone” to survey participants.

All the better to hear you, my dear.

ftm Follow Up & Comments

Mobinautes Ready For Measurement - March 27, 2007

No media is considered serious until somebody can offer a measurement system that converts a data-trail into pictures, charts, tables and graphics that appeal to ad buyers.

Quantity always trumps science in the ad buyer world. Zillions of data-points fit to crunch in desk-top versions of SPSS or SAS create metaphysical joy for junior media buyers. Then let the printers beware. Hundreds of pages filled with graphics and tables will spew forth. Even in the 21st century, job security is measured by kilos of paper.

M:Metrics is one of several measurement services ready and willing to download piles of data about mobile phone users. Their latest product, announced this week, is MeterDirect, a panel measurement of Smartphone/3G users in the UK and US, “unlocking mobile as a viable medium for advertisers,” according to the company’s quite over-the-top release.

And M:Metrics released exciting data from their panel of 500 in the US and 600 in the UK. You can almost see ad buyers jumping up and down.

For example: noting that results are “projected,” the most popular mobile phone web site in both the UK and US is Google.  But the countries diverge, thereafter, in their choices. UK mobile phone web surfers go for site on the mobile phone companies (Orange, Three and O2). And don’t forget the BBC. US mobile phone web surfers go for the brand name search sites (Google, Yahoo, MSN and Live) and, Disney.

Prime-time for mobile phone web surfers is 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM. Wait: Isn’t that normal work hours? But, managers despair not: the average time spent surfing the web on the mobile phone is 8 minutes. Don’t even think about it.

And, too, Americans (who have Smartphone/3G) diddle most on Fridays while Brits like Tuesdays. Fascinating, yes?

Médiamétrie was quicker to announce their new service to collect everything you would want to know about those who do more with the mobile phone than simply call or send SMS. And, one better, Médiamétrie has come up with the clever name: mobinautes. Web surfers, in French, are called internautes. Mobinautes, therefore, are mobile phone surfers.

The Médiamétrie panel will be 2,500 strong, yielding more depth, more data points, more opportunities for number crunchers. First data will be released in July.

Surfs up!