Millennial Media launches mobile-ad scorecard for brand advertisers

By Mickey Alam Khan

April 16, 2009

U.S. mobile Internet reach

Mobile ad network Millennial Media has introduced Scorecard for Mobile Advertising Reach and Targeting, a monthly look at U.S. mobile advertising campaign data.

Targeting brand advertisers, SMART offers a snapshot of the key metrics observed through Millennial Media's campaign and network traffic. A major highlight of the debut scorecard: more than 10 billion U.S. impressions were claimed in the first quarter, 3.39 billion in March alone.

"The mobile advertising business is showing strong growth in a tough media market as is evidenced by Millennial Media's SMART," said Paul Palmieri, CEO of Millennial Media, Baltimore, MD.

SMART offers insights on U.S. mobile advertising by highlighting reach, targeting, handset data and impressions.

The Millennial Media scorecard is yet another resource for marketers, coming after AdMob's monthly media metrics report and the Crisp Wireless Index.

Millennial's campaign actions mix

In another difference from other industry snapshots, Millennial Media claims SMART switches the emphasis from publisher-focused industry-sizing metrics such as the number of impressions to advertiser- and media-oriented data such as engagement and reach.

SMART also offers analysis and recommendations for advertisers seeking more intelligence on the mobile ad market.

For example, the network claims that mobile provides five times the lift in brand metrics than that of Internet campaigns, based on brand impact studies conducted by market researcher Insight Express.

The scorecard also included several insights from March traffic:

 Reach of more than 31 million out of the 56 million Nielsen-identified mobile Internet users
 The top 20 mobile handsets account for 43 percent of all mobile Web traffic on Millennial Media
 Fifty-eight percent of the campaigns used some degree of geo-targeting
 Ten of the top 20 U.S. mobile DMAs by ad requests were in California, Texas and Florida
 Forty-two percent of the campaigns used frequency capping
 The average number of ad requests per page view was 1.09
 Forty-two percent of brands are using other third-party tracking capabilities, while the rest relied on Millennial Media

Millennial Media have put reach and engagement at the hub of this monthly metrics effort, indicating its preference for these two factors as key to buying mobile media. The preferred measurement currency in the company is cost-per-engaged-user.

"Cost-per-engaged-user is a way for advertisers to gut-check in aggregate across the industry the cost to engage a unique user," Mr. Palmieri said.

"It's a way for mobile to be compared in aggregate to the value of advertising online or through other mediums," he said.