Nielsen Co. has introduced a new service that meshes the company's consumer segmentation and mobile media targeting tools.

The offering, called Mobile-PRIZM, is designed to help advertisers and marketers better target mobile audiences. The Nielsen Mobile and Nielsen Claritas divisions pitched in to develop Mobile-PRIZM.

"The reason that we're doing this is so that they have the confidence that they can target the audiences in the same way they do in other media and target them the same way in mobile," said Kanishka Agarwal, vice president of mobile media at Nielsen Mobile, San Francisco.

Nielsen Mobile is the world's leading independent provider of syndicated consumer research to the telecommunications and mobile media markets.

Nielsen Claritas is a provider of marketing information and target marketing services.

Mobile-PRIZM is a combination of Nielsen Mobile's Mobile Media Marketplace and Nielsen Claritas PRIZM lifestyle segmentation data.

The Mobile Media Marketplace collects and reports consumer mobile usage, audience sizes and composition across all mobile media vehicles such as messaging, mobile Internet, mobile video, ringtones, games, mobile applications and music.

PRIZM has 66 consumer segments.

The PRIZM segments are based on socioeconomic data such as income, race, occupation, education and household composition. Other lifestyle attributes are also considered, including where the audience vacations, what they drive and their favorite brands.

The audience segments within Mobile-PRIZM include Bohemian Mix, a progressive mix of young singles and couples, students and professionals who regularly check out the latest movie, nightclub, laptop or microbrew.

This group is said to lead all other categories in mobile Internet usage. Twenty-seven percent of this audience accessed the mobile Internet in the last 30 days compared with an average 16.7 percent across all other segments.

Other PRIZM audience segments are the Young Digerati, a group of affluent and tech-savvy professionals; Upper Crust, which is the nation's richest group; Money and Brains, which combine advanced degree with sophisticated tastes; and the Cosmopolitans who are immigrants and descendants of multicultural backgrounds.

The target for this latest Nielsen product is advertisers, advertising agencies and media companies to help them align their mobile marketing with current media plans.

"Nielsen Mobile is the gold standard in mobile audience measurement and Claritas in consumer segmentation, in general," Mr. Agarwal said.