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Are You Using the Right Mobile Advertising Metrics?: How Relevant Mobile Measures
Change the Cross-Platform Advertising Equation

Article in Journal of Advertising Research · September 2017

DOI: 10.2501/JAR-2017-034

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What We Know About MOBILE MEDIA AND MARKETING
Numbers, What’s Wrong with
Please Mobile Advertising Metrics?
Relevant Mobile Measures
In the Cross-Platform Advertising Equation
Gian M. Fulgoni INTRODUCTION
comScore, Inc. When digital advertising spending surpassed tel-
gfulgoni@comscore.com evision advertising spending in 2016, it offered
a clue to what the future held in mobile. In 2017,
Andrew Lipsman
mobile advertising spending is expected to drive
comScore, Inc.
70 percent of digital advertising dollars, eventu-
alipsman@comscore.com
ally exceeding television in 2019.1 The news would
be even more compelling if brands were confident
about the measures they use for assessing the value
of mobile in the cross-platform advertising equa-
tion. Many in the industry, however, believe that
despite the impressive advertising-spend growth
forecasts, brands continue to underinvest in mobile.
Martin Sorrell, GroupM’s WPP chief executive
officer, told AdAge in February 2016, “The mobile
revolution hasn’t registered yet with companies.”
The fact is that the right mobile metrics are
within advertisers’ grasp, but the wrong ones
often are consulted. As a result, advertisers
often underestimate the benefits of this medium.
Despite its small screen, mobile meets many of the
most pressing needs of brand marketers—strong
reach, high engagement, exceptional targeting,
proven effectiveness, and efficiency in delivering
against campaign key performance indicators.
It is time to set the record straight on which met-
rics do and do not matter for evaluating mobile
advertising in the context of cross-platform cam-
paigns. This should help advertisers rethink their
approach to, and unlock the potential of, mobile
brand advertising.
1 eMarketer. (2017, March 15). “US ad spending: The eMarketer fore-
cast for 2017.” Retrieved May 23, 2017, from https://www.emarketer.
com/Report/US-Ad-Spending-eMarketer-Forecast-2017/2001998.
2 Morrison, M. (2016, February 24). “Martin Sorrell on mobile: ‘We
haven’t adapted.’” Retrieved May 23, 2017, from AdAge website: http://
adage.com/article/digital/martin-sorrell-mobile-adapted/302818/.
DOI: 10.2501/JAR-2017-000
MURKY MOBILE METRICS
Clicks Are Unreliable
Many marketers have relied on click-through rates
to help gauge mobile advertising effectiveness. But
just as clicks on online advertisements years ago
were proven irrelevant (Fulgoni and Mörn, 2009),
the same outcome is perceived for mobile banner
advertisements. In 2016, mobile location firm Retale
reported that 60 percent of mobile advertisement
clicks were accidental,3 suggesting that marketers
should put little stock in what traditionally has
been the most commonly used metric to gauge dig-
ital advertising performance. Retale’s mobile find-
ing is particularly troubling because it implies that
the average click—by definition—does not provide
2
any reliable indication of effectiveness.
Viewability Can Vary
For mobile branding effectiveness, the metrics
discussion must begin with qualified exposure to
brand advertising impressions. Measurement of
mobile advertising viewability, however, has been
subject to debate by those who argue that view-
ability standards first applied to desktop-display
advertising cannot be ported over to mobile easily.
In June 2016, the Media Rating Council (MRC)
adopted mobile viewability standards, after exten-
sive research of mobile impression data for differing
advertising formats across a diverse set of publish-
ers and advertisers. The standards defined a viewa-
ble mobile-display advertising impression as having
at least 50 percent of the pixels in the viewing pane
3 Frederick, B. (2016, February 4). “60% of all mobile banner ad
clicks are accidents” [web log message]. Retrieved June 9, 2017,
from MediaPost website: https://www.mediapost.com/publications/
article/268266/60-of-all-mobile-banner-ad-clicks-are-accidents.html.
September 2017 JOURNAL OF ADVERTISING RESEARCH 1
What We Know About mobile media and marketing
Figure 1 Top 100 Properties’ Average Audience Reach (MM) by
Platform in March 2017
Source: comScore Media Metrix Multi-Platform, United States, March 2017
for at least one continuous second.4 The
minimum time requirement applies to both
newsfeed and nonnewsfeed environments.
MRC Chief Executive George Ivie acknowl-
edged in April 2016 that “because of the
way [newsfeed] ads pass through a page
as users scroll and because the ads aren’t
being loaded onto the page on a static basis,
the user’s cognition and recognition of ads
could be different.”5
With this in mind, the MRC guidelines
allow for the separate reporting of a met-
ric called “subsecond impressions” for
mobile-display impressions that meet pixel
in-view criteria for more than half a second
but less than one second. This alternative
definition was presented to “facilitate the
buy/sell parties’ abilities to recognize any
value they may choose to assign to these
impressions, while also (recognizing) they
do not meet the requirements to qualify as
Viewable Impressions.”
4 “MRC mobile viewable ad impression measurement
guidelines.” (2016, June 28). Retrieved June 9, 2017, from
Media Ratings Council website: http://www.mediarating-
council.org/062816%20Mobile%20Viewable%20Guide-
lines%20Final.pdf.
5 Schiff, A. (2016, April 1). “Mobile viewability stand-
ards are about to get real.” Retrieved June 9, 2017, from
Ad Exchanger website: https://adexchanger.com/mobile/
mobile-viewability-standards-get-real/.
2 JOURNAL OF ADVERTISING RESEARCH September 2017
On the same topic of viewability, results
from a 2015 study on video advertising
effectiveness, conducted by Facebook in
conjunction with Nielsen, showed “that
from the moment a video ad was viewed
(even before one second), lift happened
across ad recall, brand awareness, and pur-
chase consideration.” Because Facebook
6
advertising exposure is concentrated on its
newsfeed, this research suggests that there
are contexts for which use of a lower “view-
ability” threshold for mobile could apply.
Opinion justifiably might vary on which
thresholds are most appropriate to use in
which contexts. A lack of consistent appli-
cation of mobile viewability thresholds
nevertheless can mean added friction in
mobile advertising measurement.
RELEVANT MOBILE METRICS
Daily versus Monthly Reach
As the newest of the major media plat-
forms, mobile traditionally has been
thought of as a reach-extension medium.
Recent data indicate that this thinking is
naïve, however, because mobile is exceed-
ingly capable of demonstrating substantial
6 “The value of video for brands.” (2015, March 17).
Retrieved June 9, 2017, from Facebook website: https://
www.facebook.com/business/news/value-of-video.
reach—particularly in relation to desktop.
A March 2017 analysis of the comScore
Top 100 digital-media properties showed
mobile’s clear supremacy over desktop as
a reach medium. Eighty-nine of the Top
100 properties had larger mobile audiences
than desktop, and the average mobile
audience of these properties was 53.5 mil-
lion, 65 percent higher than the average
desktop audience (See Figure 1).
This dynamic does not exist only among
the larger-scale properties; in fact, it is even
more pronounced among medium-size
properties. The average Top 1,000 digital-
media property now has two times the
reach on mobile—12.7 million visitors—that
it does on desktop (6.3 million visitors).
Monthly active users—which is analo-
gous to the unique visitors metric—is a
common metric of reach used by digital-
media publishers. Some, however, are
taking it a step further to flex their reach
muscle by regularly reporting their daily
active users. Facebook began breaking out
this metric in its quarterly earnings reports
on going public in 2012.7 In 2017, Snapchat
touted this metric on an investor road
show in advance of the company’s initial
public offering in March. Why the empha-
sis on daily active users when monthly
active users always will be a larger num-
ber? It gives these large digital-media pub-
lishers a method to tout their scale in a way
that is comparable with television.
Television ratings are based on the
average-minute audience for a given net-
work or program; the number that an
advertiser buys reasonably estimates the
number of people with the opportunity to
see a given advertisement. The monthly
active-user metric is a reasonable standard
for digital, given that many campaigns run
7 Constine, J. (2012, July 26). “Facebook Q2 user stats:
955M monthly active users, 552M dailies (and 543M
monthlies on mobile).” Retrieved June 9, 2017, from Tech-
Crunch website: https://techcrunch.com/2012/07/26/
facebook-q2-earnings-and-stats-revenue-1-18b-955m-
monthlies-552m-dailies-543m-mobile-monthlies/.

Figure 2 Viewing Time across Four Digital Channels in March
2017
Source: comScore Media Metrix Multi-Platform and Video Metrix Multi-Platform, United
States, March 2017
Figure 3 Average In-Target Reach and Invalid Traffic Rates for
14 Brand Campaigns in 2016
Source: comScore custom digital-advertising campaign analysis, United States, 2016
for 30 days, but it is not comparable to how
advertisers think about their television-
advertisement buys. Not many digital pub-
lishers can boast the daily audience scale to
compete with large prime-time advertise-
ment buys, but Facebook, Snapchat, and
others do, and the daily active-user metric
allows them to compare reasonably against
television in the process.
The Ringer, a website launched in 2016 by
former ESPN columnist and podcaster Bill
Simmons, examined the reasons behind this
shift toward the daily active-user metrics
What’s Wrong with Mobile Advertising Metrics? thearf.org
for certain digital publishers. It ultimately
concluded, “Why focus on daily metrics?
Because Snapchat is not just interested in
grabbing digital-marketing dollars — it
wants TV money as well.” 8
Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and the
fast-emerging Snapchat are among the
largest and highest-engagement brand-
advertising platforms in digital media
8 Luckerson, V. (2016, November 10). “Daily active users is
tech’s new most important metric.” Retrieved June 9, 2017,
from the Ringer website: https://theringer.com/daily-active-
users-is-techs-new-most-important-metric-9cfd89b261fd.
September 2017
today, and their ability to deliver massive
daily audience reach depends significantly
on mobile usage. In March 2016, 75 percent
of Facebook time and 69 percent of You-
Tube video-viewing time occurred on
mobile. Desktop viewing was unremark-
able by comparison. Less surprising were
the viewing-time data for mobile app
champions Instagram (99 percent) and
Snapchat (100 percent; See Figure 2).
In addition to delivering reach very
quickly, the fact that video advertising is
central to each of these platforms means
they offer similar engagement benefits to
television advertising. Messages are com-
municated effectively through the sight,
sound, and motion that video conveys. To
achieve true comparability with television,
however, digital media also must align
on the right metrics. Given the habitual
engagement that occurs on mobile, daily
reach is an increasingly relevant metric.
Target Reach Efficiency
Mobile advertising has many benefits over
desktop when it comes to delivering cam-
paign performance. The authors analyzed
14 brand-advertising campaigns, each with
both a desktop and a mobile component.
They found that mobile advertisements
performed better at reaching their tar-
get audiences and were significantly less
affected by invalid traffic (See Figure 3).
Target reach efficiency is all the more
significant when one factors in mobile’s
strength among younger audiences, such
as the coveted 18- to 34-year-old demo-
graphic. In fact, this segment now spends
more time on mobile (23.1 billion hours)
than watching live television (19.1 billion
hours), which underscores mobile’s impor-
tance for marketers seeking to reach these
valuable consumers (See Figure 4).
Strong campaign performance metrics
likely contribute to mobile advertising’s
proven effectiveness in relation to desk-
top advertising. Across a compilation of
JOURNAL OF ADVERTISING RESEARCH 3
What We Know About mobile media and marketing
Figure 4 Total Hours Spent (in Billions) by Medium Among 18- to
34-Year-Olds in the Fourth Quarter 2016
Source: comScore Media Metrix Multi-Platform and Xmedia (custom), United States, fourth
quarter 2016
Figure 5 Brand Lift for U.S. Desktop and Mobile Advertising
Campaigns 2014–2016
Source: comScore Brand Survey Lift, United States, 2014–2016
hundreds of digital-advertising campaigns
measured by comScore on behalf of its cli-
ents over the course of 2014–2016, mobile
advertisements outperformed desktop
at every phase of the marketing funnel,
from awareness to favorability, likelihood
to recommend, and purchase intent (See
Figure 5). These metrics, which used sci-
entific methods to compare a demographi-
cally and behaviorally similar test group
of advertising-exposed individuals with a
control group of nonexposed individuals,
begin to account for advertising effective-
ness more properly than more rudimen-
tary viewability and click-through metrics.
4 JOURNAL OF ADVERTISING RESEARCH September 2017
The results run counter to conventional
wisdom but nevertheless prove that mobile
is an effective brand-advertising vehicle.
Advertisers must place more importance
on mobile for reaching their target audi-
ences in an effective manner, particularly
if those audiences are younger.
Incremental Lift in Cross-Platform
Campaigns
More recently, brand marketers have begun
to measure the delivery of their cross-
platform campaigns to get a holistic under-
standing of how their campaign performed.
In the past, campaigns were planned in
their own media silos and evaluated in the
same way. Although any measurement is
better than no measurement, this approach
virtually ensured that media allocations
were suboptimal in the context of meeting
their reach and frequency objectives.
comScore recently analyzed the results
of several cross-platform advertising cam-
paigns to understand how digital advertis-
ing—and mobile specifically—contributed
to incremental lift in target reach beyond
the television campaign on its own. The
majority of the campaigns devoted less
than 2 percent of their impressions to
mobile, and none saw incremental lift in
reach of more than 1 percentage point. The
minority of campaigns that devoted more
than 10 percent of their impressions to
mobile increased their target reach by more
than 10 percentage points versus television
alone. All of these campaigns saw their tel-
evision reach curves flatten considerably
during the second half of the campaign,
but those that invested in digital—and
specifically mobile impressions—saw their
reach continue to build throughout the full
duration of the campaigns.
Mobile advertising also has been shown
to drive incremental effectiveness in cross-
platform campaigns. The Advertising
Research Foundation’s “How Advertising
Works” cross-platform initiative showed
that study participants exposed to the same
advertisement on television and mobile had
a free recall of 62 percent and weighted pur-
chase intent of 39 percent. This significantly
outperformed the effectiveness (52 percent
free recall and 28 percent weighted pur-
chase intent) for those exposed to the same
campaign twice on television (Snyder and
Garcia-Garcia, 2016). This suggests a syn-
ergistic effect to exposure across multiple
advertising media.
The same study also showed that return
on investment increased with the number
of platforms on which a campaign was
delivered, with a three-platform campaign

driving 23 percent higher return on invest-
ment than a single-platform campaign.
Each of these research efforts highlights the
value of adopting cross-platform advertis-
ing strategies and the need to measure
their impact with traditional campaign
delivery and effectiveness metrics.
RETHINKING ADVERTISING METRICS
Mobile is an extraordinary branding vehi-
cle if used properly in the cross-platform
context. It offers both scale and efficiency
in reaching mass audiences and has proven
itself to be an effective medium. In the con-
text of cross-platform advertising, mobile
is the key to efficient allocation of media
to maximize target reach. Most advertisers,
however, still have not come close to lever-
aging its full potential (See “How Brands
Are Getting Smarter in Mobile Marketing,”
page tk).
The key to reaching that potential is in the
use of consistent metrics. Advertisers only
will be able to measure their advertising
outcomes accurately according to metrics
View publication stats
What’s Wrong with Mobile Advertising Metrics? thearf.org
that matter, rather than merely the ones that
Andrew Lipsman is senior vice president of marketing
are most available. Mobile click-throughs
and insights at comScore, covering multiple
long have worn out their welcome and
industries and overseeing the company’s marketing
should be replaced with consistent meas-
communications, insights, and thought leadership
urement of mobile branding and sales-lift
initiatives. He began his career at the NPD Group,
effectiveness. Mobile viewability ought to
where he worked with clients such as Kraft Foods and
be anchored to whatever minimum view
Johnson & Johnson. Lipsman specializes in social
time drives meaningful lifts in brand met-
media, e-commerce, online video, digital advertising,
rics, rather than to any previous standards
and multiplatform marketing and has contributed to
for digital advertising on desktop. Monthly
the Journal of Advertising Research.
audience numbers, in addition, should be
supplemented with daily audience numbers
to improve comparability with television on
the ability to deliver reach efficiently. REFERENCES
Fulgoni, G. M., and M. P. Mörn. “Whither the
AUTHORS’ BIOS
Click? How Online Advertising Works.” Journal
Gian M. Fulgoni is cofounder and chief executive officer of Advertising Research 49, 2 (2009): 134–142.
of comScore, Inc. Previously, he was president and chief
executive officer of Information Resources, Inc. During a Snyder, J., and M. G arcia -G arcia . “Advertis-
career of more than 40 years at the c-level of corporate ing across Platforms: Conditions for Multimedia
management, he has overseen the development of many Campaigns—a Method for Determining Opti-
innovative technological methods of measuring consumer mal Media Investment and Creative Strategies
behavior and advertising effectiveness. He is a regular across Platforms.” Journal of Advertising Research
contributor to the Journal of Advertising Research. 56, 4 (2016): 352–367.
September 2017 JOURNAL OF ADVERTISING RESEARCH 5