By Ray Anderson

Everyone has been talking mobile marketing and advertising for some time. We've heard about a number of campaigns, but have they been successful?

Why hasn't mobile marketing taken off a breakneck speed yet? I believe that the missing piece is a consistent way to measure mobile marketing success.

Marketing teams that run television, PC Internet and print campaigns measure their own results very carefully to optimize their return on marketing investment and success.

In mobile, companies such as AdMob, Third Screen Media, Pudding Media and others offer measurement tools for campaigns run through their own ad networks.

Yet thus far, measurement has been confined to single ad networks.

Marketing teams need independent analytics so they can compare results across different ad networks and across the industry itself. They need to be able to determine the characteristics of those most receptive to their marketing message.

This information is then used to focus marketing campaigns on the countries, networks and handsets which return the highest conversion rates.

Three bugbears
Companies have been measuring the success of PC Internet, print and TV advertising for years. Why is it so difficult to do this in the mobile space?

First, measurement tools typically have been developed in-house or use an in-house framework/nomenclature. While a company can measure relative improvement or specific goals, it can't compare itself with other companies.

One company might use a weblog to capture page hits, and another might use randomized images. Both deliver different numbers.

Second, methods of measurement differ.

For example, some companies may attempt to measure the success of a mobile campaign by sending a text message -- some by text messages being marked as delivered, others by users clicking on a link in the message, and yet others by them actually getting to the linked content or Web site.

Third, there is limited data available about the mobile visitor you are targeting.

Until marketers can target their campaigns and then have some ability to know they are reaching these targets, mobile campaigns are really hit or miss.

Screen test
There is some encouraging news on the measurement front.

At the CTIA Wireless 2008 show last month in Las Vegas, the Mobile Marketing Association announced it is working with ioglobal to conduct a trial that will attempt to measure mobile-TV-PC Internet integrated marketing campaigns.

This is certainly a step in the right direction as it looks like the MMA-sponsored ioglobal "Three-Screen Trial" could deliver interesting data benefiting the whole marketing community.

The plan is to track several three-screen case studies and develop common measurement and terminology. This trial should help the participants, provided they can see the pooled results.

Pooled results will be a significant step forward for the industry.

At present measurement is a bit like a group of people comparing times for a 1-mile race -- one timing with seconds, another with heartbeats and a third with a sundial. Then the group discovers one is running, another cycling and the third are doing it through a swamp.

Let's hope the trial can help the industry come up with a framework for figuring out the right measurement tools for mobile marketing campaigns or, at the very least, understand how to get us all on the same playing field by ensuring mobile marketers can independently analyze the success of mobile campaigns.

Ray Anderson is Cambridge, England-based CEO of Bango, a mobile Internet services provider. Reach him at