Nielsen acquires Telephia

The Nielsen Co. is acquiring Telephia, giving the media tracking giant its first direct access to consumer habits on the mobile phone. No financial terms of the deal were disclosed.

Telephia, based in San Francisco, tracks all sectors of telecom but it has a particular focus on mobile usage, a measurement area where it competes heavily with M:Metrics. While Nielsen has dominated the TV measurement space, using its famous Nielsen’s boxes, it has branched into other media, tracking Internet usage patterns, movies and gaming. Just recently, however, it announced its intention to move onto the mobile deck. Nielsen said it would start from outside of the wireless industry and working inwards. Its measurement service would initially start by drawing on vast stores of consumer data from its TV and other media services and extrapolate mobile media consumption. Later this fall it planned to move into direct measurement launching its own handset client tracking usage patterns.

The deal with Telephia, however, gives Nielsen instant access to that data, which it can combine with its more general consumer media information. For instance, Nielsen can measure how many times a TV program is watched across the broadcast TV, Internet and mobile TV platforms. Telephia also already has a sizable customer base, selling its data to more than 100 different clients in the telecom, wireless and media industries.