The GSMA and select wireless carriers have released a feasibility study that creates a measurement process for mobile browsing that claims to respect the privacy of mobile consumers.

Inaugurated yesterday at the GSMA's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, the study's measurement process is also designed to offer planning information for media and advertising professionals. It is also a precursor to the launch later this year of an audited mobile measurement service.

"The mobile advertising ecosystem is complex and nascent,"said Paul Palmieri, president/CEO of Millennial Media, a mobile ad network in Baltimore, MD. "This major mobile advertising initiative â?¦ is a large validation that the mobile advertising industry is a key global growth area in mobile.

"We wholeheartedly agree that data, and further refinement of standard metrics, are the key to unlocking the brand advertising dollars that will power the growth of the overall mobile advertising industry,"he said.

Telefonica, Orange, T-Mobile International and 3 comprised the task force helping the GSMA with this mobile advertising effort.

Based in London, the GSMA is the world's leading trade association for wireless carriers and mobile companies. Its 750 carrier and 200 other mobile-involved members have skin in the mobile advertising space.

Indeed, transparent measurement data is key to helping mobile advertising win and retain credibility with brands, agencies and publishers.

The GSMA's Mobile Media Metrics Study ranks popular mobile Web sites by number of visitors, page impressions, time and duration of visits. The goal is to enable improved planning of marketing campaigns and grow sales of mobile ad inventory.

Familiar faces on mobile
Take the results of the study for Britain, for example.

Based on a sample of anonymous data from British wireless carriers, the study showed that carrier sites had the lion's share of mobile audiences, at 68 percent of visits to mobile sites in December.

In No. 2 place were Google sites, followed by Facebook, which was the top mobile site by time spent browsing.

The fourth to 10th spots were held, in descending order, by Yahoo sites, BBC sites, Apple sites, Microsoft sites, Sony Online and Sony Ericsson, Nokia and AOL and its Bebo social network.

There was an overlap with the top 10 wired Internet sites, as measured by comScore Media Metrics.

In first place on that list were Google sites, followed by Microsoft sites, Yahoo sites, Facebook, eBay, BBC sites, AOL and Bebo, Amazon sites, Ask Network and Wikimedia Foundation sites.

All told, 167,648 mobile Internet sites were measured for the study.

User behavior and demographics
One of the key advantages of the GSMA's mobile media metrics program is access to aggregated user behavioral data for comparison with other media.

For instance, mobile consumers accessing Facebook are said to spend an average of 24 minutes daily on the site. This was slightly shy of the 27.5 minutes spent daily on the wired Facebook site by wired Internet users.

But mobile consumers were ahead of wired Internet users on the average number of visits to Facebook each day: 3.3 visits versus 2.3 visits.

The study also found that while mobile was used consistently throughout the day, the 7 a.m. to 10 a.m. time band was key, accounting for 22 percent of total minutes browsed versus only 11 percent of the minutes browsed by wired Internet users in the same time frame.

So what the study surmised was that mobile not only acts as an extension to media such as the Internet and television, but also reinforces other morning media channels such as radio and newspapers.

Demographics is another area that will benefit from the GSMA's mobile advertising effort.

What is clear is that a combination of aggregated site popularity and user behavior data with independently collected demographic information will engender better targeting of mobile campaigns.

Per the study, 48 percent of mobile users were ages 18-34 versus 40 percent for the wired Internet and 29 percent for the TV audience. Clearly, mobile offers the most youthful audience so dear to advertisers.

Also, mobile is more skewed toward men, who account for 63 percent of total users versus 53 percent for the wired Internet.

New audit service expected
The GSMA worked with comScore as its measurement partner and ABC Electronic as its media audit ally, along with JICWEBS and its member associations.

Advertisers, agencies and publishers can now expect the commercial launch of an audited mobile measurement service in the second half of this year.

The GSMA is set to debut three working groups -- for advertisers, publishers and media and agencies -- to confirm the measurement and reporting needs of the media industry.

The groups will also rally support for the proposed GSMA measures as a common standard for mobile audience measurement while working toward integrating this data into cross-media tools and business processes.

The GSMA's effort will complement similar initiatives from the Mobile Marketing Association and CTIA, the two leading mobile trade groups in the United States, as well as support third-party measurement pushes by market researchers Nielsen Mobile and comScore.

"We applaud the GSMA for their advertising measurement initiative,"Millennial Media's Mr. Palmieri said. "It represents part of the effort necessary to measure the potential of the mobile Internet for advertisers."