For the first time, standardized key metrics for measuring advertisements have been established for the mobile interactive industry.

Developed in a joint effort by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) with the assistance of the Media Rating Council (MRC), the “Mobile Web Advertising Measurement Guidelines” provide a framework to govern how ad impressions are counted on the mobile Web.

This section of the guidelines covers general reporting, disclosure and auditing parameters:

General Reporting Guidelines:

General reporting parameters (dayparts, weekparts, time zones, etc.) provide for consistency and comparability. These should be based on the logical application of information about the usage patterns of the medium.

In order to provide for more standardization in mobile web measurement reporting, the following general reporting parameters are recommended. Note that these are only two of the possible reporting parameters that may be used. If parameters in addition to time and location are reported, similar rules should be defined and applied.

Time:

Day - 12:00 midnight to 12:00 midnight

Time Zone – Full disclosure of the time-zone used to produce the measurement report is required. It is preferable, although not a current compliance requirement, for certified publishers or ad servers to have the ability to produce audience reports in a consistent time-zone so buyers can assess activity across measurement organizations. For US-based reports it is recommended that reports be available on the basis of the Eastern time-zone, for non US-based reports this is recommended to be Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).

Week — Monday through Sunday

Weekparts — M-F, M-Sun, Sat, Sun, Sat-Sun

Month – Three reporting methods: (1) TV Broadcast month definition. In this definition, the Month begins on the Monday of the week containing the first full weekend of the month, (2) Four-week periods – (13 per year) consistent with media planning for other media, or (3) a calendar month. For financial reporting purposes, a month is defined as a calendar month.

Additional Recommendation: Dayparts – Mobile usage patterns need further analysis to determine the usefulness of establishing effective and logical standardized reporting day parts. We encourage such analysis to determine the need for standardization of this measurement parameter.

Location: If information about the geographic location of the users is collected and reported, any limitations to the methods used should be disclosed. Ambiguities in wireless operator routing should be accounted for in location determination and estimated through processes derived from carrier/ad server cooperation.

Disclosure Guidance:

Media companies and ad serving organizations should fully disclose their ad impression recording process to buyers and other users of the ad impression count data. An organization’s methodology for accumulating mobile advertising measurements should be fully described to users of the data. Specifically, the nature of measurements, methods of sampling used (if applicable), data collection methods employed, data editing procedures or other types of data adjustment or projection, calculation explanations, reporting standards (if applicable), reliability of results (if applicable) and limitations of the data should be included in the disclosure.

Auditing Guidelines:

General: Third-party independent auditing is encouraged for all ad-serving applications used in the buying and selling process. This auditing is recommended to include both counting methods and processing/controls as follows:

  1. Counting Methods: Independent verification of an activity for a defined period. Counting method procedures generally include a basic process review and risk analysis to understand the measurement methods, analytical review, transaction authentication, validation of filtration procedures and measurement recalculations. Activity audits can be executed at the campaign level, verifying the activity associated with a specific ad creative being delivered for performance measurement purposes.
  2. Processes/Controls: Examination of the internal controls surrounding the ad delivery, recording and measurement process. Process auditing includes examination of the adequacy of site or ad-server applied filtration techniques. Although audit reports can be issued as infrequently as once per year, some audit testing should extend to more than one period during the year to assure internal controls are maintained. Audit reports should clearly state the periods covered by the underlying audit testing and the period covered by the resulting certification.

To download complete IAB-MMA Mobile Web Advertising Measurement Guidelines please visit: http://mmaglobal.com/MobileWebMeasurementGuidelines_final.pdf or http://www.iab.net/media/file/MobileWebMeasurementGuidelines_final.pdf

Source - Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), Mobile Marketing Association (MMA)