Trade associations get a mixed press but the mobile operators’ GSMA is one that seems to have got a handle on focusing on what its members – and industry - really need.
Given the task of working out how the networks might best help mobile media and advertising develop, Henry Stevens at the GSMA has come to the view that it should develop a standard of measurement for mobile web audiences (for site rankings by demographics, handset and time of day), for agencies to plan and buy against.
This is very smart. Misguided though they may be, the major issue keeping P&G and their ilk from committing significant spend to online remains the lack of this kind of standard. But, what Henry’s up to could deal with the problem before mobile has got going. Online’s weakness (& strength in many ways) is that it has evolved without a standard of audience measurement and it’s got so big that the process of imposing one now is a study in reverse engineering.
As long-time mobile bod Helen Keegan pointed out to me a while back, we must always remember that the operators’ core business of voice and text carriage utterly dwarfs the ad industry as a whole, let alone the ad revenues that might run through their infrastructure. So, to criticise them for their lack of attention to its development is something akin to having a go at an elephant for not cleaning its toenails.
Still, it seems clear that what little attention they might give to it could be heading in the right direction.
Mobile body looks to create traffic measurement system
