IAB and Mobile Marketing Association Establish Standard Methodology for Measuring Mobile Web Ads

For the first time, standardized key metrics for measuring advertisements have been established for the mobile interactive industry. Developed in a joint effort by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) and with the assistance of the Media Rating Council (MRC), the “Mobile Web Advertising Measurement Guidelines” provide a framework to govern how ad impressions are counted on the mobile Web.

A joint task force, comprised of members of the IAB’s Mobile Advertising Committee and the MMA’s Measurement Committee, met for more than a year to develop these guidelines, which specifically cover WAP/Mobile Web advertising.

“The ‘Mobile Web Advertising Measurement Guidelines’ will help marketers accurately assess the delivery of ads within mobile websites and offer a clear way to count ad impressions, assuring them that their advertising messages are reaching mobile consumers ,” said Anna Bager, Vice President and General Manager of the IAB Mobile Marketing Center of Excellence.

“More than anything, the guidelines demonstrate the mobile industry’s commitment to its marketing partners to create a transparent and consistent business environment for buying and selling ads,” said Greg Stuart, President and CEO, MMA. “Brands and their agencies will be further encouraged to devote resources towards marketing campaigns unique to the mobile web- reaching customers at critical times in the purchase cycle, enhancing brand relationships or providing critical information through mobile marketing.”

“The IAB and MMA are to be applauded for recognizing that the creation of measurement guidelines for all marketing platforms eliminates a huge barrier to entry for advertisers and opens the market for enormous opportunity and innovation,” said George Ivie, CEO, MRC.

The objectives of the “Mobile Web Advertising Measurement Guidelines” include:

• Defining the mobile web ad impression
• Creating a common methodology that will be widely adopted in the U.S. and globally for counting mobile web ad impressions
• Encouraging U.S. mobile web ad servers to have their impression counts audited by an independent third party
• Providing marketers and agencies with greater clarity and certainty (via the auditing process) that key metrics used for buying mobile web ads are methodologically sound and meet the highest standards available to the media industry
• Reducing levels of discrepancies and spurring the industry’s growth by offering Internet publishers and ad servers a consistent, rigorous way to count the delivery of ad impressions

The IAB’s Mobile Advertising Committee is comprised of over 140 member companies who are dedicated to developing and expanding the mobile space as a viable advertising platform. This committee now sits under the newly created IAB Mobile Marketing Center of Excellence, a new unit within the organization that will serve as an industry-wide resource for innovation in mobile advertising.

The MMA’s Measurement Committee is comprised of MMA member companies. The Measurement Committee’s charter is to provide global leadership in the following areas: (1) Advertising Currency Definition & Quantification, (2) Mobile success definition as part of cross media marketing mix, and (3) White Paper/Education on importance of measurement to brand marketer engagement of the mobile channel. The Mobile Web Advertising Guidelines are available here http://mmaglobal.com/MobileWebMeasurementGuidelines_final.pdf.