The MMA Primer on Mobile Analytics FINAL Word 11Sep2012€¦ · MMA Primer on Mobile Analytics...

The MMA Primer on Mobile Analytics Mobile Marketing Update September 2012 Issued by the MMA Mobile Analytics Committee Co-Chairs: Mike Ricci, WebTrends and Anders Rosenquist, Ph.D., POSSIBLE

www.mmaglobal.com Mobile Marketing Update ©Mobile Marketing Association 2012 2

MMA Primer on Mobile Analytics

OVERVIEW ...................................................................................................................... 3

AN INTRODUCTION TO MOBILE ANALYTICS ..................................................... 4

SETTING A FRAMEWORK FOR MOBILE ANALYTICS – UNDERSTANDING ENGAGEMENT ............................................................................................................... 5

APPLY MOBILE ANALYTICS TO LEADING MOBILE MARKETING PROGRAMS ..................................................................................................................... 6

TEXT AND MULTIMEDIA MOBILE- A SIMPLE EXPERIENCE BUT RICH IN ANALYTICS .................................... 7 APP ANALYTICS CAN BE DIFFICULT TO ACCESS ............................................................................................. 7 MOBILE WEB ANALYTICS OPTIMIZE USER EXPERIENCE ................................................................................... 8 MOBILE ADVERTISING – UNIQUE DELIVERY AND EXPERIENCE ..................................................................... 9 IF THAT WEREN’T ENOUGH – MOBILE BRINGS CONTEXT AND COMMERCE .............................................. 9 INTEGRATING MOBILE PAYMENT SOLUTIONS IS COMPLEX AND SENSITIVE .............................................. 11 THE MOBILE ENABLEMENT OF TRADITIONAL MEDIA AND ITS CROSS-CHANNEL EFFECTS ..................... 11

LEVERAGING MOBILE’S FULL MARKETING FUNNEL POTENTIAL ............... 12

INDUSTRY CHALLENGES TO MOBILE ANALYTICS .......................................... 13 IMPLEMENTING ANALYTICS ACROSS MOBILE IS HAMPERED BY DATA SILOS ............................................. 13 TAGGING AND TRACKING USERS REMAINS A TECHNICAL HURDLE ......................................................... 13 PRIVACY REMAINS A PARAMOUNT ISSUE ...................................................................................................... 14 REGIONAL AND NATIONAL DIFFERENCES IMPACT TECHNICAL CAPABILITIES AND REGULATIONS ...... 14

WHERE TO GO FROM HERE ..................................................................................... 15 KEY REQUIREMENTS: PARTNERSHIPS, CRM, TECHNOLOGY, RESOURCES, AND RESOLVE ...................... 15 ASKING ANALYTICS PROVIDERS THE RIGHT QUESTIONS ........................................................................... 15

WHO WE ARE .............................................................................................................. 17 ABOUT THE AUTHORS ................................................................................................................................... 17



Overview Marketers are constantly being challenged to get the most out of their marketing budgets. The search for the optimal marketing mix, improved ROI and new consumer insights along the entire path to purchase is a constant requirement of successful marketers. The process of measuring campaign performance that informs and delivers these results is often referred to as measurement or analytics, and as noted in Figure 1 analytics is high on the list of marketer’s needs and plans. Analytics is in a maturing process in the online realm, but it remains nascent in mobile. All forms of media measurement in mobile are being confronted in different ways. In advertising, the proper measurement of mobile ad impressions is being codified by the IAB, the Media Rating Council and the MMA. In the area of mobile audience measurement, much work remains to be done. For mobile analytics, i.e., the measurement of campaign performance along the entire path to purchase, the heavy lifting is just beginning. Late last year the IAB and Radar Research issued a white paper, The State of Mobile Measurement1, drawing industry attention to the dilemmas of mobile measurement, and called for the industry to assess and articulate the priorities for measurement-related initiatives. The MMA supports this perspective, and herein tries to focus in on the basic aspects of mobile analytics to move the discussion forward.

Because consumer adoption of mobile, especially smartphones, has been so rapid and unrelenting, online analytics tools and approaches are often being used to track and measure the results of mobile campaigns because of their availability and familiarity. But the practice of mobile marketing, requires that marketers consider many factors that are simply not part of the online or traditional marketing process. For example, in mobile you must consider the screen size and resolution across thousands of devices; numerous operating systems and browsers; unique network elements; location; the fact that the all pervasive online targeting and tracking tool, the “cookie”, often does not work across all mobile media paths and environments; and unique data collection and privacy mechanics and rules. Consumers are mobile and marketers must be too. Marketers have an inordinate need to catch

up to the consumer. They need to make sense of

1 http://www.iab.net/media/file/Mobile-measurement-paper-final-draft2.pdf 2 Mr. Bough’s presentation: http://www.mmaglobal.com/events/forums/newyork2012/presentations

Figure 1: 2012 Digital Strategy



the tools and techniques that will be best suited for them to create compelling consumer experiences and glean insights that will guide the direction of their investments and focus. Mobile analytics is a key tool to help marketers achieve just that.

An Introduction to Mobile Analytics Analytics is an indispensable part of successful marketing. It gives brand marketers, agencies, vendors, and publishers the ability to quantitatively measure consumer interaction with brands and their marketing campaigns. A small tome's worth of terms has sprung up to label and track the wake of information a mobile consumer generates. It informs marketing engagements, ad delivery, product design, web design, user experience, content schedules, and budgeting decisions. Analytics is a given of nearly any online engagement, yet it is surprising how little attention mobile analytics receives from the same firms getting so much worth from tracking their traditional and online media and marketing efforts.2 Mobile is a new channel for marketers. Because it is new, and there is limited experience and benchmarks, it tends to have a smaller budget allocation than other channels. Like the Internet, which was discounted and underestimated as a marketing channel at first, mobile is going through a worldwide period of explosive growth and maturation. As a leading industry analyst, Mary Meeker of Kleiner Perkins, pointed out, we spend 10% of our media time on our mobile devices, but the entire advertising industry only spends 1% of its budget in the channel3. The MMA just released a meta analysis study – MXS – which stands for Mobile’s X% Solution4 – that revealed that for certain product categories the optimal allocation of mobile within the marketing mix should be in the 7-9% range. This suggests that media spending in mobile, estimated to be a $1.5 Billion business in North America in 2012, should actually be $10.0 Billion or more at this writing.

Keep in mind, marketers are not spending for spending’s sake. Jeff Hasen, CMO of HipCricket, recognizes this. He opens with the line “Sell more beer” in his book Mobilized Marketing5 (2012) in recognition of the fact that marketing is about driving the sale of goods and services. Properly done, mobile marketing works. Brands have begun to recognize this too. Time Warner Cable, according to Rob Roy, Vice President and General Manager of eCommerce and Interactive Marketing, reported at the MMA Forum New York (2012)6 that the mobile direct sales channel accounted for over 20% of all

2 Mr. Bough’s presentation: http://www.mmaglobal.com/events/forums/newyork2012/presentations 3 KPCB Internet Trends 2012 by Mary Meeker, May 30, 2012. 4 http://www.mmaglobal.com/news/mma-launches-mobile-study-mxs 5 http://www.amazon.com/Mobilized-Marketing-Engagement-Loyalty-Through/dp/1118243269 6 Mr. Roy’s presentation: http://www.mmaglobal.com/events/forums/newyork2012/presentations

“Mobile is more important than ever because it allows us to deliver at the ‘zero moment of truth.’ For our recipe sites, we see a spike in usage when the consumer is in the grocery store. You can’t get closer than that to the consumer.” B. Bonin Bough, Vice President, Global Media and Consumer Engagement. Kraft Foods. MMA New York Forum, June 2012



their digital sales in less than 9 months. Target is another brand that has deeply integrated mobile into its marketing mix. It offers messaging, mobile web and applications experiences for every stage of the consumer life cycle. Its mobile app and mobile website are designed to interact with consumers along every step of the marketing funnel, from initial exposure, through transaction and all the way to advocacy. Target uses mobile as a stand-alone marketing product and as a tool to enhance its online and offline-marketing efforts. The Target app and mobile website has a product search feature that allows consumers to shop wherever they are—even comparison shopping in competitor’s stores. A store locator within the app on the mobile site can provide directions to the nearest store. Coupons and other time sensitive offers can be pushed or texted to consumers when they are most likely to respond to the offer. Mobile accessible shopping lists and gift registries enhance the actual shopping experience, and registered users can use their phones as their Target card customer loyalty and credit card at the point of sale. Target’s efforts in mobile have not only given them an impressive consumer offering, but it has given them an ability to stitch together a wealth of data into a comprehensive view of a consumers' mobile activity. From there, they can unite this mobile data to strengthen their CRM system that informs every other part of the retail giant's consumer product offerings. Key to Target’s efforts is a keen understanding and use of mobile analytics and strategies that embrace and stimulate consumer engagement.

Setting a Framework for Mobile Analytics – Understanding Engagement Mobile analytics shares many terms and concepts that are, at first, familiar to marketers who have experience with online analytics. A smartphone and a desktop computer can both access the web and find the same content using a browser built by the same company. The same metric reported for a desktop user does not mean the same as it would for a mobile user. The key to this difference is in understanding how the context and capabilities of mobile interact with consumer behavior. The most important difference is the nature of consumer engagement, which is heavily influenced by the intimacy and personal nature of mobile. At the heart of mobile analytics is an understanding of this engagement. Mobile’s ubiquity in most consumers’ lives means it is always on and can be used nearly



anywhere and at any time. That means any time of day, standing in line at a store, waiting for an elevator, or just before going to bed. An understanding of mobile engagement when interpreting mobile analytics will help answer when and where your consumers are interacting with your mobile efforts and help you understand how their behavior differs from their traditional and online interactions. Likewise, this data is vital in helping marketers evolve the mobile user experience so that it’s increasingly relevant and drives greater traffic and engagement. In this medium, engagement and relevance are the difference between success and failure. For instance, seeking information on a mobile device is more akin to spearfishing than casting a wide net. Mobile users are often very task-focused when using their devices rather than casually browsing the Internet. For example, Microsoft Advertising reports that nearly 70% of smartphones users conduct search and take action within an hour of starting7. Because of this, time spent on mobile is precious and the requirement to be contextually relevant is much higher in a mobile environment than on the traditional desktop web. This distinction is explained in Table 1.

Table 1: Engagement Informs Analytics Interpretation

Mobile Desktop

Total visitors

Mobile web visitors are typically fewer than on desktop, but considering that users are less likely to be browsing casually browsing than seeking specific information on a mobile device, they consist of more of your core audience than a desktop.

Desktop traffic, at least in the US, is far greater than mobile traffic but its audience is far more generic in scope.

Time spent

Many mobile apps and websites have tool-focused features that are designed to be used as easily and quickly as possible.

Desktop’s greater screen space and bandwidth makes it easier to put more links, rich media, and other content in front of the user.

Pages per visit

Modern mobile devices have made scrolling in-page easier than browsing across multiple tabs or pages. Mobile users may have fewer pages per visit, but those pages may make up a greater percent of mobile content.

Clicks to other pages yield near instantaneous results and are easier to exit back to your previous experience, both of which enable more clicks.

Apply Mobile Analytics to Leading Mobile Marketing Programs There are numerous mobile marketing media paths, mobile campaign experiences and mobile enablers that enrich the mobile experience. This includes mobile messaging like SMS, MMS, and mobile email; voice interaction; mobile search; mobile web; applications; location based services enabled through GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth, or NFC; QR codes; mobile payments; augmented reality; mobile advertisements delivered through various

7 Microsoft Advertising Blog. http://community.microsoftadvertising.com/en/marketers-agencies/advertising/b/advertising/archive/2011/03/15/rimc-2011-learning-a-digital-lesson-from-the-icelandic-people.aspx



channels; and other mobile media capabilities depending on unique device features. Each brings with them a wealth of quantifiable metrics, and even some qualitative ones, that could be discussed at length in their own papers. As this is document is a primer, it will just touch on the pillars of a number of the leading mobile marketing programs.

Text and Multimedia Mobile-‐ a simple experience but rich in analytics Text and Multimedia messaging are understated mobile marketing channels when compared to the options smartphones typically offer. Messaging is used from everything from sending updates and offers, to sharing information, and making peer-to-peer payments (that is, one individual using mobile to send money to another). Many of these actions are prime for proximity-based mobile marketing. That said, any mobile marketing campaign that includes SMS, MMS or even email for that matter will need to track and measure usage. As a standalone tactic, SMS, MMS and email analytics are straightforward. As an

integrated tactic, say as a reminder an app sends a user, marketers need to be able to know how a user may interact with their app, which messages that user chooses to opt-in and opt-out of and when, and then link that data with the measurements listed above

App analytics can be difficult to access Applications and application stores have

fundamentally changed the way in which users buy content and interact with marketers. Data on downloads, user location at download, ratings, app deletions, and other data generally resides within the application stores. Data from the application itself, like application launches, session times, utilization of native device functionality (like using the camera or gyroscope), specific consumer actions, and the wealth of data an app can generate, is captured by the brand or publisher in their analytics systems Multiple stores, which reflect the multiple OS environments of smartphones, present even more complexity in gaining access to this information. A single brand may use different publishers to develop their app for separate platforms, giving them potentially different analytics for each version of the application. Additionally, each application store may provide different information, making deeper analytical analysis even more difficult. Each store effectively creates it’s own data silo which complicates the job of the marketer in forging a complete picture. However, some analytics packages can seamlessly integrate store data together with behavioral data to give marketers a holistic picture of what’s happening with their app. In the absence of this, marketers are forced to stitch together this data externally which is a time consuming and difficult task. We encourage marketers

Despite the simplicity of receiving a text for end users, SMS still has several key measurement points including carrier, device identifier, timestamp, response history for specific numbers, and URL link conversions.

App stores’ success in getting consumers to pay for apps introduces novel, ad-free marketing efforts (i.e., premium apps) that can pay for their own development when done well.



to look for solutions that marry this data together and also provide an even more complete picture by showing what is happening on the mobile website as well. Understanding mobile engagement, mentioned previously, is necessary in interpreting application analytics. Consumers may use a brand’s application differently than they use its mobile website—although this may be because the application offers unique features, is easier to use from a user experience standpoint, or are there demographic explanations behind who uses a brand’s mobile website versus its application. Applications that enable users to login to an account tie together this consumer behavior with a personal profile on the publisher side. This provides for a whole new layer of potential analytics for marketers. Enabling login comes with its own set of technical and strategic considerations that impacts application and feature design and deeper integration into existing CRM systems. There is no set way of managing these considerations, and marketers need to work with application stores, publishers, and each other to make full use of the consumer information potential mobile applications provide.

Mobile web analytics optimize user experience Mobile web analytics should be conceptually familiar to marketers who work with traditional web analytics. They are both useful in understanding not only how consumers are consuming content but also what changes can be made to optimize their browsing behavior. As shown above in Table I, their similarity in terms and goals still yield differences in their interpretation. Mobile's technological and behavioral considerations— e.g. the smaller screen size, using a touchscreen rather than a mouse, the speed of the carrier network—make a finely tuned user experience of utmost importance to the mobile web. Given the similarities in features that mobile websites share with many apps and traditional websites, it is useful to compare these analytics with each other. Unfortunately, the technology and methodology that tracks and reports each of these analytics makes direct analytical comparisons difficult. Once the mobile industry is better able to align the analytics for mobile websites, apps, and traditional online sites, the analytics they produce will give a dramatically fuller picture of consumer behavior for marketers to leverage. The explosion in the number of hybrid apps––a mobile website that is build around the shell of a native operating system application, thus give the consumer the experience of the benefits of both a mobile website and application––have created a technical challenge. Hybrid apps are becoming very prominent with mCommerce applications because they effectively support creating one code base for the app (HTML5 experience for mobile website) and then placing it in a native wrapper that enables the consumer to download and place on icon on the phone screen, the hybrid app thus has the familiar app look and feel. The issue here is that this effectively creates two unique visits to the same app. However, some analytics tools use a hybrid tag that effectively “sessionizes” these two visits and stitches them together as one. We recommend marketers seek analytics tools that provide this capability.



Mobile Advertising – unique delivery and experience Mobile advertising simply defined is the placement of an ad within one of the various forms of mobile media discussed above. Mobile ads can leverage many content types, from text, to audio, images, video and even rich media (ads that employ all content types, thus creating a visually appealing and interactive experience). Advertisements are a driving force of mobile marketing, they’re used to what is refereed to as upper funnel branding (as measured by awareness/recall, time spent, purchase intent, etc.) and lower funnel performance (as measured by downloads, registrations, etc.) marketing opportunities. However, an ad delivered via a traditional computer versus those to a mobile device is an apples-to-oranges comparison. Mobile ads need to be optimized for the content and media their being delivered to, size, legibility, and resolution, and other factors must be taken into account. This usually means that mobile ads are much simpler than most online ads, however with the advent of rich media this is changing. Moreover, mobile ads tend to be much more visible that the traditional online, with minimum ad sizes and maximum mobile screen sizes that means mobile advertisements, as a percentage of screen space, will be larger than traditional online ads. Leaving one’s current user experience in mobile is more costly than online—multitasking is limited––while launching a new window or app completely removes you from the environment a user was in, and mobile calls-to-action tend to be more limited than online. Marketers’ ability to validate the success of a campaign is also challenged by mobile ad-serving platforms. Measurement is often built in but can be biased in tracking and reporting only well-performing metrics. There are limitations on appropriately tagging ads and independently verifying ad performance. Marketers need to know what mobile ad metrics will best reflect performance and ask their platform provider’s ad reporting accordingly. Marketers can also independently tag their own campaign assets (ads, videos, etc.) and gain their own campaign analytics to validate what the ad network is reporting. These tag management solutions make it relatively simple for the marketer to tag campaign assets and obtain very accurate view of how consumers are engaging with this content.

If that weren’t enough – mobile brings context and commerce The most important analytics information mobile phones provide is context for user behavior. Context can be considered the location, time, proximity, and device related to use. A user may interact differently with a brand at home, on the street, or even in a retail location. Context gives marketers an ability to understand where and when consumer engagement occurs, which in turn provides insight deep enough to target a mobile marketing experience for a customer that has just left work but not yet arrived home.



Table 2: Context can generate a wealth of analytics information

Mobile location is one of the most important and most sensitive piece of contextual information. No other media, traditional or digital, provides anything like it. Desktop location tracking is possible through its IP address but such information is fixed, strictly limiting its contextual uses, and less accurate when compared to mobile location information. Mobile location information is reported differently depending on the service. Mobile operators can provide location-based information, or marketers may use hardware options like Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and GPS to collect user location information. Mobile location is frequently used in conjunction with other actions, making it important to be able to link user location with the specific action—navigation-based location information is used very differently than delivering geo-targeted hyper-local content. Such a sophisticated capability doesn’t come without its drawbacks. Mobile location reporting needs to be opt-in which means mobile location services are sometimes turned off. Consumers tend to be sensitive about reporting their mobile location, especially when the benefit to them is unclear. Privacy considerations also impact when location information can be collected, how it can be used, and what other consumer information can be attached to it. Time is simpler to report and lacks the same privacy sensitivity. That doesn’t mean it should be underestimated as a useful analytical tool. Time is useful to understanding when consumers take certain actions, like searching for a dinner recipes or accessing their shopping list. Marketers have made good use of well-timed mobile and social media campaigns that aim to hit consumers at a specific time during the day. It can also be used to plan offline but time-sensitive engagements and promotions. Proximity gives marketers the ability to create and measure hyper-local campaigns. Offering and delivering a coupon at the point of sale is an example. Another is a promotion advertised at a store entrance that prompts users to opt-in and then receive a push notification on their mobile device. Traditional media’s version of hyper-local marketing—a staffed kiosk or a static print image with a call-to-action—are either



expensive to maintain (and to update) or quite un-interactive. Proximity marketing makes it possible to measure this activity as well by tracking opt-ins, shopping behavior, dwell times, and other measures of responding to a specific call-to-action. Consumer device information underscores the complexity of the technology that enables mobile marketing. Device manufacturer, operating system, and software versions will differ from user to user. Each of these factors provides potentially useful differentiating behavior that marketers can use.

Integrating mobile payment solutions is complex and sensitive Mobile payment systems are generating more complexity even as they introduce extremely useful services for consumers. This includes a service like Boku that allows mobile devices to scan traditional plastic cards or the competing mobile wallets offered by Amazon, Google, and PayPal. In the broad world of mobile payments, these solutions exist alongside premium SMS and NFC-enabled points of sale. Additional solutions will surely develop before any kind of consolidation of payment analytics reporting occurs. Each mobile payment option comes with its own set of pros-and-cons and way of working with data. Payment data includes subscriber ID as well as purchase history, although the identity of the end user may be anonymous. Typically, this data resides with the provider of a particular mobile payment solution and must then be assimilated into an analytics solution (unless the provider insists they own the end user data, in which case the data may not be able to integrate with an analytics solution).

The mobile enablement of traditional media and its cross-‐channel effects Finally, mobile is unique in that it is not only a direct channel to consumer engagement, it is an interactive enabler of all traditional media channels, including television, outdoor media, print, radio. Mobile has an incredible cross-media impact. For example, as part of a 360 degree campaign, Taco Bell added QR codes to its packaging and print ads and built a mobile experience specifically for the campaign. The program ran for six weeks and was scanned over 430,000 times by over 375,000 unique users, providing each of them a deeply engaging experience on their mobile device8. Consider how valuable such a personal and direct experience this allowed Taco Bell to deliver to its customers.

Another example of mobile’s cross media impact is a recent study done by AdColony in promoting the movie Contraband9. The study showed lift across the board in all traditional brand metrics by adding mobile to the TV experience. Combining mobile (through iPhone and iPad) led to incremental lift of 450% in likelihood to search, 160% in likelihood to recommend, and 72% in purchase intent.

8 MMA Webinar on this subject can be found here, after you sign in: https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/382549086 9 Cross-Platform Video Ad Effectiveness Study, AdColony | Nielsen, April 2012. http://adcolony.com/assets/AdColony-Nielsen_Study.pdf



Leveraging Mobile’s Full Marketing Funnel Potential Mobile’s greatest potential for marketers is its ability to reach consumers along the entire marketing funnel: Awareness, Consideration, Intent, Purchase, Experience, Loyalty, or Advocacy.

Adept marketers planning integrated campaigns can use mobile at any or every part of this funnel to fill in gaps in reaching the consumer. It can used as a bridge between marketing efforts or even for a full-fledged mobile campaign that makes use of most of these capabilities. Marketers can work with agencies and vendors to retrieve analytics at these key points to build a data-rich picture of the entire marketing funnel. Doing so promises powerful insights into consumer behavior and should be a major goal for marketers and brands.



Industry Challenges to Mobile Analytics Agencies, vendors, developers, merchants—the mobile marketing industry—faces a number of challenges that need to be addressed openly by everyone working in this space.

Implementing analytics across mobile is hampered by data silos The variety of data available in the mobile ecosystem necessarily brings with it a high level of complexity. SMS, mobile web, app behavior data, app store data, location-based data, mobile ad and QR code data all tend to reside in separate data silos. Stitching this information together is challenging, and the mobile marketing industry should endeavor to break down these silos. Brands stand to benefit the most from a seamless analytics ecosystem and will need to drive this change. Agencies, vendors, and OEMs benefit in the short term by operating within their own silos, but the entire mobile industry stands to gain from the maturation and greater adoption of mobile analytics. Breaking down these silos will help in numerous ways:

Creating a more integrated way to report mobile web and mobile ad data will create an analytics capability much more similar to what is available with online analytics.

Uniting available app behavior data with mobile web data, at least in cases where the same action can be performed on both, will make for easier mobile web/app comparisons.

Standardized access and reporting of location information will make available mobile web, app, or ad data more valuable.

Developing analytics packages designed with OPEN APIs that allow for the simple import of other key mobile data that may matter to the marketer.

Bringing these initial metrics together will go a long way towards enabling full funnel tracking for far more brands and marketers.

Tagging and tracking users remains a technical hurdle Tagging and tracking mobile user behavior is essential to collecting analytics, but it is a still-developing mobile capability. JavaScript is a standard tagging mechanism, but this is only effective for smartphones capable of handling JavaScript and completely omits feature phones. This is becoming more common as users switch to smartphones with “modern” mobile OS browsers – iOS, Android, and Windows Phone browsers – which all support JavaScript. Pixel-based tracking has been introduced as a solution for non-JavaScript enabled devices but is not yet standard practice. Third party cookies, the bread and butter of online tracking, are not supported by many platforms, or are turned off by default, as on iOS,



making comprehensive web tracking more difficult. Apple initially allowed access to UDIDs as a way to address these challenges, but then began deprecating access due to privacy concerns. This issue is still in flux at this writing.

Privacy remains a paramount issue Consumers expect that some information will be collected about their activities, but this needs to be balanced with the tenets of privacy – providing consumers transparency, notice, and choice. While the mobile marketing industry works to create a self-regulatory approach around these tenets, brand marketers and their media and analytics partners must be mindful of the most challenging tenet, choice, and the control that consumers must be able to exert with any mobile device. A key issue here is that many analytics suppliers aggregate data and use it for other purposes. In this model, a marketer’s data is truly not it’s own and it is often being resold for a variety of purposes. Brands need to take great precautions to insure that their data remains private because changes in these privacy laws could leave many of them dangerously exposed. Further complicating privacy considerations, OEMs and carriers are constantly changing the game in terms of what can be measured and tracked. Each new capability presents a new challenge for brands, marketers, agencies, vendors, and technology providers. Finally, there are government and regulatory efforts that touch on these issues. These, too, are in flux and must be addressed with education and evangelism from the mobile marketing industry. The MMA’s Privacy and Advocacy Committee has been studying and debating this issue for sometime and will be issuing guidance on the use of privacy and mobile unique identifiers in the very near future.

Regional and national differences impact technical capabilities and regulations There are regional considerations to keep in mind as well when implementing mobile analytics programs. Due to network and local infrastructure, what may be technically or legally possible in one country may not be possible in another. Each country has its own privacy and data collection regulations that determine what can and cannot be done to contextually enable relevant programs. Regional technical and regulatory issues are too important to go without comment, but are far too complex to be fully fleshed out here,



Where to go from here What does it take to get mobile analytics right? The following is a list of the broad strokes necessary for long-term success in mobile and mobile analytics. Keep in mind that some companies have already completed this process while others have yet to begin.

Key requirements: partnerships, CRM, technology, resources, and resolve Partners are necessary to link all the pieces of planning, implementing, and analyzing mobile. Brands, marketers, vendors, and publishers must form networks with each other to enable the promise of full funnel tracking and extreme marketing precision that mobile offers. Effective mobile analytics needs an appropriate CRM system. This requires a system that can integrate the different silos of mobile data and link them together with CRM systems that inform traditional offline and online media. Its specific capabilities should be tailored to the marketing campaigns of your overall marketing needs but encompass your greatest cross-channel analytics goals. Marketers need a technology platform that enables them to fully leverage the mobile space. A mobile program provides a lot of control to a marketing campaign, and the right platform gives you the ability to implement this control exactly where and when you need it. Of course, having the resources to operate these systems and platforms is necessary as well. Hiring mobile specialists internally will provide marketers expertise in this channel. Just as traditional and online media channels have their print, TV, interactive, and social media experts, mobile has experts that will greatly add to your internal ability to leverage the mobile space. Achieving the steps listed above requires a resolve for instituting organizational change. Mobile’s cross-channel nature will strain against traditional organizational divisions. Keeping mobile as its own organizational silo—or as an organization of one individual—will hamper mobile efforts just as surely as handling its data and analytics will.

Asking analytics providers the right questions Marketers need to take a thoughtful approach to choosing an analytics provider. The first step is to consider which analytics will give you clearest picture of your consumer and your own mobile marketing efforts. Depending on your particular mix of marketing efforts, you may need to ask potential providers the following:

Which mobile channels do they provide analytics for? (This list includes mobile web, apps, SMS, mobile search, mobile display, mobile video, 2D barcodes, and mobile commerce.)

Which SDKs do they support? What tag management capability do they have? Do they have visitor level behavior tracking?



Can you enable consumer segmentation? Does their segmentation ability give you dynamic content optimization options? Does their analytics integrate with social networking on mobile? Does their analytics offer WWW-site integration? Can you access app store data within the analytics platform itself? Is there real-time API support? Do they have a sufficient privacy SLA?

Do they allow for simplified importation/data exportation and are there charges associated with this?



Who We Are The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) is the premier global non-profit trade association representing all players in the mobile marketing value chain. With more than 750 member companies, the MMA is an action-oriented organization with global focus, regional actions and local relevance. The MMA’s primary focus is to establish mobile as an indispensable part of the marketing mix. The MMA works to promote, educate, measure, guide and protect the mobile marketing industry worldwide. The MMA’s global headquarters are located in the United States and it has regional chapters including North America (NA), Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), Latin America (LATAM) and Asia Pacific (APAC) branches. For more information, please visit http://www.mmaglobal.com. This document was developed by the Mobile Marketing Association’s Mobile Analytics Committee, which includes:

MMA Mobile Analytics Committee Adfonic Adobe Systems Incorporated AdTruth AOL BANGO comScore, Inc. Expedia Experian Simmons Fiksu GFK Retail and Technology Greystripe, Inc. JumpTap, Inc. Merkle, Inc. Microsoft Mindshare

MobileFuse Mobile Intelligence Solutions, Inc. PercentMobile POSSIBLE PreEmptive Solution Rentrak Corporation Research in Motion The Coca-Cola Company Tremor Video Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. Urban Airship Velti WebTrends xAD Zumobi

The MMA and the Mobile Analytics Committee appreciates all the effort the committee put into this paper.

About The Authors Seth Fowler, a digital and mobile strategist based in NY, NY. Michael Becker, Managing Director of North America, Mobile Marketing Association Leo Scullin, Global Industry Initiatives, Mobile Marketing Association Mike Ricci, VP Mobile, WebTrends & Anders Rosenquist, Director of Emerging Media, POSSIBLE

The MMA Primer on Mobile Analytics FINAL Word 11Sep2012€¦ · MMA Primer on Mobile Analytics...

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