Nielsen boxes go mobile

Media measurement giant the Nielsen Co. is jumping into mobile, adding the newest frontier in digital entertainment to its broad tracking services encompassing TV, movies, games and film. The wireless data tracking space, however, isn't virgin territory. M:Metrics and Telephia have been covering that ground for years, but Nielsen is aiming its research from a different direction. Instead of starting with mobile phone users and expanding outward, the new Nielsen Wireless is starting with its vast store of consumer media viewing data and then focusing inward on the mobile user.

As part of its TV program survey, Nielsen tracks its participants' service provider and other personal information about their wireless service. Nielsen can then use that information to tell carriers, content providers and mobile advertisers the media watching habits of particular demographics within their customer bases, which those companies can then use to decide what services to launch, what content to mobilize and which ads to serve up, said Jeff Herrmann, vice president and head of the new Nielsen Wireless.

“The angle we can provide is, ‘What else are our customers doing?’” Herrmann said. “When you tie everything back to what other media they're consuming, you get a bigger picture.”

M:Metrics and Telephia, of course, collect their own demographic data and, at least for now, are the only companies that track specific wireless media consumption habits on the phone itself. Nielsen plans to launch its own client-based tracking application in the fall — software akin to its famous Nielsen box on top of the TV — but until then, Nielsen's new service, called wireless vector, will only be able to extrapolate wireless consumption habits, not track them directly.

There is something to be said for extrapolation, though. Wireless media consumption is still very low and, except for short message service, many wireless data users are still in the early-adopter category, a demographic that doesn't fit with the overall demographic makeup of all consumers.

To bring more people to wireless data, operators and content providers must launch content the masses want to consume, which makes Nielsen's holistic approach all the more important, Herrmann said. Eventually, advertisers will want to launch campaigns across media platforms, and content providers will want to distribute their content simultaneously across TV, Internet and phone — and they'll need a service that measures the performance of all three in relation to one another, Herrmann said.