New analytics firm looks to boost insight into consumer data usage

If 2009 is remembered as the year the mobile application space matured, 2010 is shaping up as the year technology had evolved to actually measure what people were doing on their mobile devices.
The importance of measuring the usage of mobile consumers is becoming increasingly important as content providers are looking for more detailed metrics as to the usage of their applications and advertisers are trying to figure out how to take advantage of the mobile space.
A new firm getting into the space is Seattle-based Ground Truth, which today emerged from stealth mode with what it calls a “census-based” measuring technology that uses actual data provided by wireless carriers as to what their customers are doing on their devices. Ground Truth, which is backed by Steamboat Ventures and Voyager Capital, calls its methodology True View.
“Carriers log everything,” said Michael “Luni” Libes, founder and CTO of Ground Truth. “Everything a person does on their phone is logged. The biggest challenge was getting carriers to share this information.”
Libes noted that with information provided from unnamed wireless operators Ground Truth has a diverse set of data covering approximately 2.5 million mobile Internet users across the country. Libes noted the source of that information as well as the depth differentiates Ground Truth’s offering in the market.
In return for providing Ground Truth with access to this information, Libes said it provides the carriers with in depth reports on data traffic patterns.
The cooperation of wireless carriers is probably the biggest coup for Ground Truth and its “True View” methodology. The company said the platform provides “non-personally identifiable usage data” from its carrier partners and provides “actionable mobile metrics.” Ground Truth said those metrics include number of unique visitors, page views, sessions, session length and advertising clicks. The company added that it can also provide insight into the mobile clickstream, including where a site’s traffic comes from, where it goes and other sites often visited by a site’s viewers.
Libes said that actionable claim is backed by the company’s ability to provide in depth information on a weekly basis.
“Ground Truth was founded to fill two critical gaps in mobile measurement: accuracy and completeness,” said Libes. “The only data source that can provide precise measures of mobile media usage is the mobile network itself. As this data shows, the accuracy of surveys is limited by the survey-taker’s memory and by the quality of a pre-determined list of sites from which they must choose. The reliability of data from individual data sources is equally limited as it only reflects a portion of the market.”
Ground Truth provided a small snapshot of its findings putting out a list of the top Web sites visited by consumers on their mobile devices from Jan. 4 to Jan. 10. The results showed domination by social networking sites with MySpace and Facebook topping the list, followed by Google, Mocospace, FunForMobile, AirG, Yahoo, Cellufun, Mbuzzy and Myxer.