The Interactive Advertising Bureau [1] and the Mobile Marketing Association [2] have released Mobile Web Advertising Measurement Guidelines for public comment in an effort to standardize key metrics for the mobile interactive industry.
Developed with the assistance of the Media Rating Council [3], the guidelines will provide a framework to govern how ad impressions are counted on the mobile Web. They will provide mobile advertisers with a way to count ad impressions and quantify the value of their investment in mobile advertising.
“Consumers have brought mobile devices into their daily lives at an astonishing pace,” says Randall Rothenberg, president & CEO, IAB. “The Mobile Web Advertising Measurement Guidelines will give marketers greater assurance that their advertising messages are reaching consumers on these mobile devices and that’s critical for continued growth.”
“These guidelines are a milestone in providing agencies and marketers with the kind of clarity that’s instrumental in the mobile channel’s continued growth,” says Michael Becker, managing director for MMA.
“The guidelines are designed to provide marketers, agencies and mobile providers with an industry-standard methodology for measuring the delivery of ads within a mobile website,” says Cameron Clayton, senior vice-president of mobile and digital applications at The Weather Channel [4], co-chair of the IAB Mobile Advertising Committee and member of the Board of Directors of the MMA. “By adopting these guidelines, publishers and ad servers will all count impressions in a consistent, rigorous way, helping assure marketers and agencies that they are getting what they pay for when they purchase mobile Web advertising.”
The objectives of the Guidelines include:
- Defining the mobile web ad impression;
- Creating a common definition and methodology that will become widely adopted in the U.S. and globally for counting mobile Web ad impressions;
- Encouraging U.S. mobile web ad servers to have their impression counts audited by an independent third party;
- Distinguishing between the established IAB web ad impression and the mobile web ad impression, and when each metric is appropriate;
- Providing marketers and agencies with greater clarity and certainty (via the auditing process) that key metrics used for buying mobile web ads are methodologically sound and meet the highest standards available to the media industry;
- Reducing levels of discrepancies and spurring the industry’s growth by offering Internet publishers and ad servers a consistent, rigorous way to count the delivery of ad impressions.
Members of the industry-advertising agencies, advertisers, online publishers and technology vendors-are being encouraged to read the proposed guidelines and submit comments.
For IAB members, the guidelines can be reviewed and comments submitted at www.iab.net/mobilewebmeasurementguidelines [5]
For MMA members, the guidelines can be reviewed at mmaglobal.com/MobileWebMeasurementGuidelines.pdf [5]and comments can be submitted via email at committees@mmaglobal.com.
The public comment period for the guidelines will remain open until Friday, December 10.