MSearchGroove

In-Brief: Bango’s new solution, based on Unique ID technology, provides publishers with information about who their visitors are, where they come from and what they do. Does this feedback loop cover all the bases - and then some - to give Google & Co. a run for their money?

Recent MSG posts, recounting a string of mobile search conferences, expose the weaknesses of conversion tracking on mobile. No one is pointing fingers, but, as Farhad Divecha, Managing Director of AccuraCast, a mobile search marketing agency, has pointed out on several occasions, Google AdWords stands out as a system that gives advertisers “inaccurate results for any Mobile AdWords campaign.” However, all Internet search engines are flawed to some extent. It’s in their DNA.

Analytics on a PC revolves around the existence of embedded JavaScript code in the pages of a website. That works a treat on PCs because the majority of browsers support JavaScript. Mobile devices fail to support JavaScript sufficiently, so it’s mot a reliable tracking mechanism. The same goes for cookies. They do work on some mobile browsers, but in the majority of cases they get lost, jumbled or removed when the user moves from one site to another. Again, not a reliable mechanism. Referral information, information in a PC scenario that can indicate where the user has come from and recount the journey from Page A to Page B and so on, is also not reliable. Sure, the Nokia N-series handsets are starting to pass information, but it’s not enough to understand precisely who is visiting a site and how they got there. Finally, the last resort, looking up the IP address, doesn’t work either as the process identifies the IP address of the mobile operator’s mobile gateway, and not the individual devices running on it.That’s where Bango Analytics comes in. I contacted Andy Bovingdon, VP Product Marketing, Bango, to explain how his company has fine-tuned its Unique ID technology to record and present publishers with detailed information on the overall patterns of traffic visiting a mobile site - right down to the behavior of individual users. (This technology, which Bango originally developed to streamline billing, assigns a unique number to each customer who passes through the system.)

The new Bango Analytics product builds on this technology to track visitors down to the network they come from and the handset they use.)As Andy points out: “When a user clicks on a link, they are very quickly directed through us on the way to the landing page. Bango servers can then see who that user is and we can also use our knowledge of all the operators’ gateways … to look up the IP address and tell you if the user is a Vodafone UK user or a Sprint user in the U.S. In fact, we can even tell you if it’s one of the MVNOs, so rather than just reporting back and saying it’s Sprint, we could also actually say this is Boost and give you that level of detail which is very important if you’re spending money with some of the search providers that …deliver search or advertising results on specific networks only.”

Listen to the podcast here. [13:35]

Mobile advertising & AdMob: In addition to identifying the individual visitors, their handset and their mobile operator, Bango also lets publishers add tags into the mobile site to identify traffic from advertising campaigns and search keywords. (This data can be exported by the site owner and analyzed to determine the advertising campaign ROI.)Put simply, content publishers, particularly those who don’t want to go with one mobile advertising network, can use Bango Analytics to measure results and determine whether or not to carry on a campaign with a specific ad network. “From AdMob’s standpoint, it unblocks the market because it means for their customers, when the customer says OK, if I’m going to spend this amount of money with you, I need proof, they now have the ability to say here you go, here’s Bango, [which] will provide you with a completely unbiased independent view of how successful the campaign is.”

Mobile search: Yesterday’s announcement establishes Bango as a prime source of search and advertising analytics, putting it in competition with the likes of Nielsen & Co. However, Bango is also taking serious steps to become a “one-stop shop” for mobile search, making it easy for content providers to appear in the natural search results of the leading search submissions.”A content provider working with Bango will be able to very easily define descriptions of their site search and also define descriptions of individual pieces of content for that deep dive content search. We will take care of sending that information up to search providers when the consumers look for that content, so it can then be found.” Search engine providers (JumpTap, Medio, Yahoo) are capable of accepting content metadata in the form of an XML feed and Bango enables this as part of its brief. To round this out, Bango Analytics also documents which search term gives the best results.

2008 trends: “I certainly think that 2008 has a good chance of being the break out year [for mobile advertising]. We obviously said that in 2007, and we saw a lot of activity with advertising and search. There were a few disappointments in the past year; I’d have liked to have seen better quality search results appearing a lot quicker, I’d have liked to have seen more consumer awareness campaigns from even more of the industry….2008 is already starting to look good. We’re already starting to see a much stronger marketing campaign from the leaders out there. Will it be the break out year or will that really push into 2009? I think there’s still a number of things we need to solve. I think we need to get search that little bit better in terms of being able to deliver the targeted results as I mentioned earlier - we are working with search companies to make that happen.”

BTW: Bango Analytics is available for free for up to 10,000 page hits per month. After that there is a “low monthly charge depending on activity levels.” However, publishers that purchase Bango’s payment products receive full Bango Analytics capabilities at no additional cost.

• Posted in
• Mobile Research, Mobile Search, Mobile Advertising, Podcasts

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