Mobile outperforming online, although metrics still evolving: Mobile Marketer/DMA panel

By Dan Butcher

April 29, 2009

From left to right: Adam Kerr of Bango, Marcus Startzel of Millennial Media, Craig Etheridge of The Weather Channel Interactive

NEW YORK - Tracking and measuring a mobile campaign's effectiveness is crucial in these times when every media dollar is expected to stretch and ROI is an expectation.

The campaign is out the door -- did it work, did mobile consumers click through the banner ad, did they click to call, did they visit the landing page, did they opt into the SMS offer? These questions and many others that are uppermost on the minds of agencies, media planners and buyers were discussed during a panel at the Direct Marketing Association's Mobile Marketing for Agencies and Media Buyers event.

"For the Weather Channel, it depends on what advertiser client wants -- we discuss the expectations of each campaign, and we look at a variety of factors," said Craig Etheridge, vice president/national sales director for the Weather Channel Interactive.

"We work with Dynamic Logic and Insight Express to track click-throughs, ad recall, favorability, message association, geographic metrics for clicks and we compare individual DMAs to see how the campaign is working, say, in Atlanta versus Charlotte," he said.

"We optimize campaigns according to geography and track post-impression campaigns, click-to-call, click-to-video, level of engagement and interaction with an expandable ad unit to see how they engage before leaving for another mobile site."

Brands will use mobile to promote specific sales and alert their customers.

"We look at campaigns from the very beginning to post-campaign or post-sale," Mr. Etheridge said. "We work with advertisers and partners on metrics, and we utilize a lot of branding studies measuring those traditional marketing attributes.

"We set up a campaign, do prelaunch, plot the control versus exposed consumers and measure marketing attributes: How does our content attract consumers, was the message well received, did consumer see a benefit to advertising on the Weather Channel, we use those metrics," he said.

"We look at the optimization process, and if we see that something's working with a particular carrier or handset, we can optimize our inventory."

The Weather Channel only sells mobile on a CPM basis. Mobile CPMs are holding anywhere from $20 to $45, according to the publisher.

"95 percent of our opportunities are working with dot-com partners, and there are different targeting capabilities," Mr. Etheridge said. "We create similar content on a mobile device as we would for dot-com.

"The CPM is similar, the cost for run-of-site is similar from online to mobile, because in order to get adoption you have to make it simple," he said. "We want the media community to buy it, and keeping it simple and evangelizing the platform helps us as an industry."

However, some panelists expressed the opinion that comparing online to mobile is like comparing apples to oranges.

"Just looking at CTR or conversion rate isn't always as valuable, because it comes down to having a predictive model where you can show the right ad to the right consumer at the right time," said Marcus Startzel, vice president of advertising sales for Millennial Media.

"It's much more about measurement and tracking, because advertisers buy with some sort of goal in mind, so we take a consultative approach to target this demographic across this type of content, hitting advertiser's target focused on their goal," he said.

So what are advertisers paying as far as the cost to engage users on mobile compared to other media?

"You can't say that a $20 CPM on mobile is equal to a $20 CPM online, because mobile will outperform online every time," Mr. Startzel said. "It all comes back to engagement, and it's tough to compare the metrics, so there's not a lot that crosses over from a pricing standpoint.

"We have a focus on engagement and ROI for the advertiser," he said. "Because consumer behavior is so erratic on mobile phones, with the average session time four minutes and 48 seconds, we have to focus on having a broad type of measurement.

"It's not about clicks or interaction rate from a rich-media banner, the real function is to engage and activate consumers."

Dart and Atlas are the biggest third parties that specialize in tracking.

Bango specializes in mobile Web analytics, tracking 10,000 mobile Web sites worldwide, with traffic from 186 countries.

"We see a range of mobile Web sites and apps, from MTV and other media brands to mobile content specialists selling ringtones, wallpapers, apps and full-track music downloads," said Adam Kerr, vice president of North America for Bango. "Mobile has similar metrics to the PC, as far as conversion rates, but the challenge is that cookies and Java script are not particularly reliable on mobile.

"For the first time we can link results on mobile Web sites back to the place where the interaction actually happened and track the lift in page impressions, which campaigns drove the best conversions and best ROI," he said. "We look at which devices and which carriers' subscribers convert better, the average time spent on a site comparing BlackBerry users to iPhone -- we can really drill down into it.

"A few years ago people would have a mobile Web site as a stand-alone experiment, but now it is absolutely part of their online strategy."

Brands want to know: How do I know that investing in mobile is making me money?

"One of the key bits still lacking is how to monetize traffic," Mr. Kerr said. "The Internet really took off when decent credit card payment companies started offering secure online payments.

"Brands are saying, ‘It's great that we can build a mobile site and drive traffic to it, but how can we monetize that traffic?' and once they can, it will really take off," he said.

"Clients are seeing much better conversion rates from mobile marketing than PC Internet marketing, and we know what drives conversion and which of their partners will drive the best conversion, and because of that they'll spend a huge amount of money on mobile marketing to drive sales."