Leader: Arrival of mobile internet usage data is a turning point

4 February 2010 | By Justin Pearse

The mobile industry doesn’t care about you. Whether you’re in media, marketing or advertising, you’re of little or no importance to the multi-billion-pound industry. It cares about selling voice calls and text messages. The paltry sums media and marketing bring in - advertising was worth under £30m in 2008, according to the IAB - don’t cause your average mobile CEO any lack of sleep.

This is why the ad industry has been so frustrated for so long. It has been crying out for the transparency of other media for a long time, demanding the facts and figures to prove mobile is the marketing medium the hype has promised. This month’s gigantic annual mobile show Mobile World Congress in Barcelona is sure to see a sprinkling of media and marketing representation, but this will remain resolutely at the margins.

Yet there is hope of a little love. This year, amid the relentless focus on technology and network infrastructure, will see the launch of what could be the most significant initiative yet for the media and marketing industry. As we report on the cover, for the first time the UK mobile industry has a collective answer to the demands of the ad industry. All UK operators have come together to provide detailed data on how consumers are using the mobile internet. Mobile advertising continues to grow (see our feature on mobile CRM) and moves such as Apple’s will further drive this. But to truly convince agencies and brands of the value of mobile, the data produced by the GSMA initiative will be invaluable. new media age has for years highlighted the need for such a move and its launch should prove a turning point.

It also raises an interesting question. This data, to be the measurement standard of choice for the mobile internet for at least the next five years, is server based. If mobile internet is, as predicted, set to take over PC access soon, will the launch this month of the UKOM common currency for online audience measurement be the last attempt to replicate the offline Barb-style panel approach to media measurement to digital?

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