In the world of digital marketing, Will Hodgman sees himself as a kind of safe-cracker.
Hodgman was the marketing savvy behind AdRelevance, a Seattle-based firm he co-founded with University of Washington computer science professor Dan Weld. AdRelevance quickly established itself as a leading online advertising measurement company, selling out to Jupiter Media Metrix before becoming Nielsen/NetRatings.
Just as he helped settle the dust in the early days of online marketing, Hodgman wants to tame the wild frontier of wireless advertising. Hodgman is teaming with longtime mobile data analyst Seamus McAteer to launch M:Metrics in an effort to track how, and how often, subscribers use everything from text messaging to wireless porn.
“The mobile market is just as big as the Internet market in the U.S., and it’s more personal, but nobody has cracked the code” in terms of wireless data usage, Hodgman said. “Nobody’s ever seen something like (M:Metrics) before.”
McAteer, who founded the analyst firm Zelos Group in 2001 before teaming with Hodgman, said the company will measure the mobile habits of a cross-section of 180,000 wireless subscribers “at a very granular level,” as well as measuring the network performance of every U.S. carrier. Respondents will be given a questionnaire and asked to track how they use their phones for any and every use other than voice.
The company was started with seed money from an undisclosed investor last September, and Hodgman and McAteer declined to discuss further potential funding or a timeline for profitability. M:Metrics plans to issue monthly and quarterly reports, selling different levels of subscriptions at varying price points based on customer size and the number of users accessing information.
Like the Nielsen ratings-long established as a benchmark for measuring TV viewership-M:Metrics will be able to monitor some users with sophisticated phones like smart phones and personal digital assistants directly through their handsets. And as such high-tech devices become commonplace, automatic tracking may eliminate the need for daily user diaries and questionnaires.
“As the technology and the consumer allow, (we will) move into more technical methods for measuring behavior,” said Hodgman.
Today only operators have full access to data regarding the entire spectrum of data usage. Not only can they monitor which applications are being embraced, they can cross-reference that information with their databases of subscriber demographics, segmenting user groups by age, sex and other variables. Some operators are even working with content providers and customer relationship management companies to help analyze usage data to boost wireless data sales.
Earlier this year, NMS Communications launched a framework that allows carriers to track wireless data transactions, and fellow CRM provider Amdocs is working to establish a similar offering.
But carriers don’t make such statistics public and can’t track usage on networks other than their own, giving them only a glimpse of the overall wireless data market. Information is even more fragmented for content providers and developers, who sometimes can’t track uptake of their own products, much less those of their competitors.
McAteer said M:Metrics expects to offer their findings to nearly every player in the wireless data chain, from carriers and chipmakers down to garage-studio developers.
“Right now, there’s such a need for data, (clients) are prepared to work with us and get it in its rawest form,” said McAteer. “They couldn’t get it anywhere else.”
As mobile marketing begins in earnest, allowing advertisers unprecedented entry to a consumer’s everyday life, M:Metrics eventually could allow marketers to track mobile ad strategies and monitor their effectiveness-much like AdRelevance provided for Internet advertisers. “Advertising is insidious,” said Hodgman. “It gets wherever it can.”
Of course, wireless data is not lacking in statistics. The mobile industry teems with consultant firms and analysts; usage reports and revenue forecasts are issued and updated on a daily basis. But while others focus on projected uptake of everything wireless, Hodgman and McAteer said accurate, timely usage tracking will set M:Metrics apart.
“This is not an advisory services company; this is a usage measurement company,” Hodgman said. “We’re not in the forecasting business; we’re in the reality business.”
