Ground Truth aims to shake-up US mobile metrics industry

The company says its service is superior to competing survey or panel-based offerings from the likes of ComScore and Nielsen.

Said founder Michael Libes (pictured): “The only data source that can provide precise measures of mobile media usage is the mobile network itself.”

Ground Truth says it takes non-personally identifying usage data from mobile operators and other data providers – though it does not disclose who – to generate mobile web metrics such as unique visitor numbers, page views, sessions, session length and advertising clicks.

The company says it can also provide insights into the mobile clickstream: for example where a site’s traffic comes from, where it goes and the other properties commonly visited by a site’s audience. Absent, however, seems to be any information on the demographic profile of site visitors – which could undermine its usefulness to the media planners and site optimisers that Ground Truth are targeting as customers.

In the UK, where ComScore runs the Mobile Media Metrics service on behalf of mobile industry body GSMA, anonymised, aggregated mobile usage data is combined with panel-based demographic information. It is not clear whether Ground Truth does, or plans to do, something similar. The company could not be reached for comment.

Still, mobile ad network AdMob has welcomed the launch of the metrics firm. Jason Spero, AdMob’s vice president and general manager for North America, said: “As more advertising dollars are being allocated to mobile campaigns, marketers must have access to data that can illustrate where consumers are going on the mobile web and which sites are most engaging. Ground Truth has brought data to market that will help marketers optimise their spend and justify a mobile strategy.”