Mobile Web Analytics

The best is yet to come for mobile.   This year’s winter Olympics have highlighted some of the most important aspects of why mobile media is different.

As someone who may be building or managing sites for mobile devices, you will want to learn the latest techniques for engaging your mobile web audience. 

Key points here are mobile combined with real time and social

While the real estate is small; the compact nature of the mobile machine makes it easy to keep in our pocket all day. The cousin to our wallets,  mobile is truly the really personal computer that no one leaves home without!

Mobile is now our extended personal broadcasting device and the best way to receive real time information about anything, anywhere. Nowhere has this been more apparent but then during this year’s winter Olympics.

The Games Gone Mobile

This is the first winter games where virtually every athlete has a twitter account and people are accessing those feeds very often on their mobile phones.  For sure athletes and reporters alike, are posting to Twitter and Facebook in real time.

Google modified search just to make sure if you are on mobile, you will get results in real time.  All you need to do is enter your favorite sport into the search bar and back will come the latest results on your mobile device

People are searching for everything and anything related to the winter games – on their mobile devices.  Searches on Yahoo mobile for "ice skating rinks" were up 607 percent last week – especially among teens. Searches for “red Olympic mittens,” were up 182 percent last week.  As you might guess, Lindsey Vonn and Shaun White are hot topics.  Her searches were up 1,446 percent this week and mobile searches for “Shaun White snowboarding” were up 1,921 percent.

According to Web analytics firm Omniture, the mobile version of NBC's Winter Olympics Web site  has reached a  58.2 million page views, a growth of over two-thirds compared to the same statistic for 2008's Beijing games.  Before the opening ceremony even began on February 12, more than one million hits had already been recorded. That one-day total alone eclipsed the number of mobile Web site  views during the entire 2006 games.

Another interesting statistic is the growth in mobile video. More than 1.4 million Olympic videos have been streamed from NBC's mobile site. That's a 400%+ growth over the 2008 games NBC's mobile Olympics site, mobile.nbcolympics.com, provides a simple and instant view at the live medal counts and all the latest news headlines.

MoFuse joined Olympics coverage by hosting the Vancouver Observer site m.vancouverobserver.com.  We are excited to be a small part of such an important global event.

Take aways:  make your website mobile, add real time feeds from social platforms such as twitter to keep people up to date.  If you are hosting an event, make sure you engage 'reporters' to your event by supplying mobile web tools to keep audiences up to date and engaged.

Mobile Advertising continues to deliver better results and brand metrics than online advertising.   This might sound surprising because you are thinking of how small a mobile ad is in comparison.   While  mobile ‘real estate’ is restricted compared to a desktop website, it is exactly that ‘coziness’ that actually brings the superior edge to mobile.

Engagement is really the key to ad effectiveness.  Advertisements get our attention when we focus on them.  We notice ads when they are in-context of similar subject matter or when they are in an uncluttered landscape.  Today the average 10” to 15” website is often very cluttered with several ads trying to grab our attention.  Look at the Weather.com site for instance, (and I’m not picking on them it just happens to be snowing a lot today!) you’ll see a mix of brands from Pedigree to Weightwatchers – all on the same page.  Their mobile web page however has one, easy to read Hampton Inn ad.  So although size matters – attention and engagement matter more when it comes to effectiveness of ads.

Recently Insight Express published a report that found that mobile campaigns through the fourth quarter 2009 performed 4.5 to five times better than online ones against norms for measures including unaided and aided awareness, message association, brand favorability and purchase intent.  Joy Liuzzo, senior director of marketing and mobile research at InsightExpress, said "the high levels of engagement, the explosion in technical capabilities, low levels of clutter and the novelty of mobile advertising all likely contribute
to increased brand impact."   Sites built for mobile devices really focus people on the content, inches from their face.  Focus works when it comes to ad effectiveness.



When you compare all of the options to advertise on mobile, we are proving out that the mobile web page is even more effective than SMS or in App ads at this point.  Mobile campaigns overall led to a higher level of purchase intent than online ads across key consumer categories including travel, auto, retail and technology. 

Publishers – it is time to realize that you will be able to make revenue on the mobile web from advertisements!  Build and manage a mobile website and most of all, understand your mobile audience using mobile web analytics.  Then use mobile ads to engage your customers and bring new revenue in 2010.

Oh yes- it matters very much.

It’s happening before our eyes, the mobile web is growing up.  Exactly one week ago Google announced that it was acquiring mobile advertising industry leader, AdMob.

What does this mean?

The mobile web really is (as we’ve said 100 times before) a separate and important digital medium that you can no longer ignore. Google knows that mobile devices represent the largest penetration of any technology on the planet.   There are about 1 Billion desktop computers in the world and nearly 1 Billion Automobiles, but there are 4 Billion mobile devices!  With all of that reach (and attention) somebody will make money monetizing the mobile real estate that is accessed on all of those devices. The growth of the mobile web is just beginning.

We will look back on this event as a defining moment for the industry.  

This strategic acquisition by Google sends a strong signal that the mobile web is ready for prime time.    It signals that Google understands that traffic on the mobile web will no longer be guided by the carrier's initial landing page ('on deck' as it is termed in the industry).  Google has seen a 5X mobile search growth over the past 2 years.  Usage patterns of the mobile web have evolved significantly and are proof that people will seach, find destinations and link to mobile web pages directly- the same behaviors as the desktop web.  This movement 'off deck', away from the carriers 'guiding' you to the sports, news, weather  or any sites THEY want you to see, is a key change.   With more eyeballs, going to more mobile sites on their own -   more publishers will be able to make money on mobile advertising. 

AdMob is a leader in mobile advertising and supplies superior services for serving mobile ads and equally as important, for reporting on mobile web analytics.  Ad analytics give you insight into your mobile web readers or visitors, and include data such as: how many clicked, what kind of device were they using, what carrier, where were they on the globe when they responded, etc.   Serving ads to mobile devices is more complex than on the desktop web.  There are a relative handful of device types and web browsers on the desktop, but for mobile there are nearly 5,000 different devices worldwide.

Google’s acquisition of AdMob clears up the question- Is Mobile A Separate Channel?– it is. 

They acquired this mobile ad leader so they can "bring new innovation and competition to mobile advertising, and will lead to more effective tools for creating, serving, and analyzing emerging mobile ads formats."    They see it as a new channel and you should too.

What Does This Mean To You?

Often people ask us – why can’t I just use the ads that are being served on my desktop website, or why won't my ads from the desktop show up on mobile?  Mobile is a separate channel and there is a distinct audience with a specific demographic profile that you will want to understand and address.   Why only get ad revenue from your desktop site when you can also design and host a mobile website that will give you advertising revenue for a new class of customers – your mobile audience.

It is time to make your site mobile and discover the newest channel for reaching a global audience - ready to experience mobile ads!

    VS.      


It is far and away the most asked question from MoFuse customers:

Can we place our web site analytics tag on our mobile website hosted by MoFuse?

Mobile web analytics are on everyone's mind. Once your mobile site is up and running, of course you want to know what your mobile web audience is doing and how you can improve their experience. 

However analytics for a desktop web site are fundamentally different than mobile web analytics in a few important ways:  

•    The execution of the measurement on the mobile site  - is different
•    The types  of data that you can capture – are different
•    Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that you will want to consider – are different

The Execution

There are 1000’s of different devices accessing your mobile site and most of them cannot handle cookie or tag technology which are standards for desktop site analytics to work.  Desktop website analytics refers to the measurement of visitors and their activities during the course of their visit to your site.  The most popular website analytics are performed today using page tags or log file analysis to track users.  Page tagging collects information via a code snippet or “tag” placed on your website which records and sends data to a third party for reporting and analysis. 

The problem:  tags for desktop sites are generally JavaScript which simply won’t do the job for the  mobile web.  JavaScript cannot be handled by most handsets or mobile browser technology.  Therefore, merely using the same tags that you use to measure desktop site just won’t work.  Worse, if you try to use them you will get results that will give you false or incomplete information!

Other standard methods for desktop site analytics such as HTTP Cookies, HTTP referrer and IP address information are also not supported by the majority of mobile browsers.  Even if they are, the data returned would be misleading due to the location of the Carrier’s IP gateway.

Collecting analytical data from your mobile site simply isn’t as straightforward as it is on your desktop site.  Using some traditional tools, like Google Analytics will appear to work at one level, however it will also give you misleading information because it is only representing a small subset of your mobile visitors.

A Different Approach for Mobile Analytics

When you make a mobile version of your website you will want to consider image tags or beacons, link redirection and HTTP header analysis instead of JavaScript tags for analytics of your mobile site.  MoFuse Premium provides all the data you need to get a proper picture of your mobile web traffic.

The Types of Data are Different for Mobile

In addition to data elements you collect from a desktop site, you can also collect data such as device type, carrier, geographic location, language and unique visitor identification.  MoFuse collects these for you and if you are a Premium user you will get these in your analytics information.   Next we'll talk about Key Performance Indicators that you will want to consider for your mobile site.  How can you measure the success of the  mobile site vs. your desktop site?  It all has to do with the goals you have for each site.