Nokia?s recent acquisition of Motally highlights the importance of analytics for mobile advertising to achieve its full potential and take its rightful place at the center of brands? multichannel strategy.

Motally provides a mobile analytics service for developers and content partners to understand, track and report in-application user behavior. The services to be acquired by Nokia focus on in-application tracking and reporting.

?In-application analytics are a competitive requirement in the market and this acquisition is designed to enable Nokia to offer our developer and publisher partners a great solution,? said Mona Kokkonen, spokeswoman for Nokia, Espoo, Finland. ?We believe that the acquisition adds tangible benefits to Nokia?s developer offering, through improved analytics that will enable the Ovi platform to better track and report user behavior for developers and content partners.

?Improved analytics will enable developers and content partners to optimize product offerings,? she said. ?Improved analytics will enable developers and content partners to optimize apps and the user experience.

?We cannot comment on what we will do now with Motally on board, nor the financials.?

Handset manufacturer Nokia also runs a mobile ad network. Its subsidiary Navteq specializes in mapping and location-based mobile advertising.

Nokia has been trying to court developers to its Ovi platform to compete with rivals such as Apple?s App Store, Google?s Android Market and Research In Motion's BlackBerry App World.

Analyze that
Motally as a mobile analytics service is comparable to Google Analytics on the Web.

By acquiring Motally, Nokia will have access to a lot of analytics, mobile applications and developer relationships.

But how will Nokia position Motally to maximize revenue?

?This [acquisition] will most likely help Nokia encourage more developers to make apps for Ovi, Nokia?s app store,? said Krishna Subramanian, cofounder of Mobclix, San Francisco. ?However, in order to be successful, Nokia needs to first lay out what their advertising and monetization strategies are.

?Based on our experience, you need to provide developers with incentives?for example, a way to make money from the apps they make?and you cannot do that with analytics alone,? he said.

Motally will help Nokia, as well as its advertisers and developers, better understand the behavioral patterns of its users by driving an increase in ad targeting ability and providing performance-driven metrics for marketers.

The significance of Nokia?s acquisition of Motally for the mobile landscape is still to-be-determined.

It does highlight the vital role that measurability plays for encouraging mobile ad spend.

?Looking at all the mergers and acquisitions that have happened from Google and AdMob to Apple and Quattro Wireless, Nokia?s acquisition of Motally definitely helps further validate the mobile apps space,? Mr. Subramanian said.

?For the industry, this means that apps are here to stay,? he said.

For Nokia, this move will help encourage more developers to make apps for Ovi, thereby helping Nokia solidify their role in the mobile applications space.

For advertisers and brand agencies, this acquisition signals another reason why their companies and brands need to have a mobile presence.

Brands need to have a solid mobile strategy going forward as opposed to just talking about mobile.

?Similar to how Quattro closed a lot of doors for other mobile ad networks on Apple's platform, we can expect the same to happen with Motally and Nokia,? Mr. Subramanian said. ?Motally will be directly integrated into Nokia?s OS and have distinct advantages over other third-party analytics providers.

?As such, expect other analytics providers like Google Analytics and Flurry to focus on other platforms and mobile Web,? he said.

Right now, Nokia?s Ovi is one of the smallest mobile application stores, if not the smallest.

In fact, Nokia has continuously been losing market share, because it is so difficult for developers to support their platform.

By acquiring Motally, it definitely looks like Nokia is going to leverage Motally?s existing relationships with developers to encourage more developers to build applications for them.

It will be interesting to see how much Nokia's OS drives Motally?s product direction.

?Apple [recently] announced it is closing down Quattro?meanwhile, Motally currently supports iPad, iPhone, BlackBerry and Android,? Mr. Subramanian said.

?Also, this acquisition seems to suggest that Motally will continue to expand globally and perhaps focus on insights that drive marketing dollars to its platform,? he said.

Building trust with brands
Even though marketers that have embraced mobile fully are reaping dividends, in the grand scheme of things mobile is still a young medium.

It will take a while for the metrics for mobile campaigns to catch up to where the PC Web space is currently, but by any measure mobile campaigns are consistently outperforming comparable online campaigns.

That is due to a variety of factors, partially novelty, partially the fact that mobile is the most personal medium, and consumers have their mobile device nearby 24/7.

That said, brands want proof of ROI.

?As mobile ad budgets are quickly rising in lock step with the importance of the channel, it?s more critical than ever that marketers be able to accurately measure the ROI of their mobile media investments,? said Jamie Wells, director of global trade marketing and mobile advertising solutions at Microsoft, Redmond, WA.

Any platform that seeks scale?hundreds or thousands of content providers?will need to invest in some sort of technology that enables these publishers to better understand how consumers are engaged with their content so that they can effectively sell inventory.

?I think Nokia?s purchase of Motally reinforces mobile?s need for rich measurement and analytics, particularly for companies who control key distribution points in the advertising ecosystem,? said David Gill, Austin, TX-based director of mobile at the Nielsen Co.

?Good measurement and reporting will be table stakes for platform providers in mobile in the same way that it has become a requirement for buying other media from TV to print to the Internet,? he said.

Closed systems versus third parties
This Nokia-Motally deal is an indication that everyone?from handset manufacturers and carriers to traditional media companies?realize the key role mobile analytics will play as the industry searches for the best way to profit from consumer usage of the mobile Internet.

Better qualifying and quantifying mobile usage among consumers will be key towards not only improving content offering on devices, but also attracting additional advertising dollars and increasing the efficiency and impact of mobile commerce.

However, will brands take Motally?s word for the effectiveness of their Nokia-powered mobile campaigns?

?It is important to note that, as it relates to selling advertising, marketers traditionally require third party data to justify ad spend,? said Evan Neufeld, vice president of marketing at Ground Truth, New York. ?Obviously ?closed? systems don?t meet this objective.

?Additionally, companies that focus on ?in-house analytics only are not able to get any market-level view of how they are performing relative to their competitors,? he said.

?Deploying in-house analytic solutions is a great first step here, but it falls short of what companies need to do in the space to maximize revenues.?

Competing with the big boys
With competition in smartphone ecosystem at a fever pitch, companies are looking to diversify their revenue streams.

Nokia, while strong internationally, is notoriously weak in the U.S. market.

"Nokia's acquisition of Motally is further demonstration of how the company is trying to re-position itself as an internet company in the mobile apps market having lost ground to big players?BlackBerry, Android and iPhone,? said Vanessa Daly, marketing manager at Bango, Cambridge, England.

?While the acquisition will help Nokia in their attempts to regain credibility among app developers by using a third-party analytics solution, the mobile apps marketplace is evolving very fast and developers are demanding more sophisticated solutions,? she said.

?It will take many more adjustments for Nokia to be able to catch up." 

Apple, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo all run mobile ad networks, and there is no shortage of independent mobile ad networks either.

Mobile advertising is one way that the company is hoping to bolster its revenues.

?In my mind [the Motally acquisition] is a necessary move if [Nokia] wants to expand its advertising offering,? said Maria Mandel, vice president of marketing and media innovation at AT&T Advanced Ad Solutions, New York.

?Better targeting, data-mining and analytics are critical in the mobile space for us to get beyond test budgets and get to real ad dollars,? she said.

?Advertisers are looking for opportunities to buy better inventory aligning with target demographics and properly measure how their campaigns are performing.?

Apps and advertising
Online travel destination TripAdvisor recently teamed up with Nokia to make its service available to travelers all over the world.

The service is now available through Nokia's Ovi Maps and Ovi Store. Consumers can use it to make travel decisions around flights, hotels, restaurants and attractions (see story). 

If Nokia plays its cards right, there is an opportunity to ramp up its applications offerings and advertising initiatives simultaneously. That is, of course, a best-case scenario.

Nokia obviously feels that the Motally acquisition will help lead to that outcome.

?The personal nature of mobile devices increases the ability and desire to tailor advertising messages for an individual?s device, operating system, Internet connection, usage pattern, demographics and more,? said Sandy Martin, analyst at Borrell Associates, Dallas.

?Analytics companies are able to unlock this information to add value to advertising messages and prop up price,? she said. ?Marketers are happy to pay it because personalized ads drive loyalty, reducing costs over time.

?Leveraging analytics is the key to driving profits for both buyers and sellers of mobile advertising.?

Final Take
Dan Butcher, associate editor, Mobile Marketer

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