Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics
The mobile advertising industry really needs to agree upon a few things. The most important area to agree upon is how we measure and report all these numbers we quote. AdMob will be passing 2 billion ad impressions served at the end of this week. What does that really mean?
More importantly, is there any standard way of measuring this vs the other players in the industry? Also, what’s the difference between ad impressions served and available impressions. And what does reach mean in mobile? How should we think about unique users? And how do we measure them? None of this is standardized, either in the definitions themselves or in the third party methods by which these numbers can be validated.
I’m not saying our way is right, but in the interest of transparency its worth looking at what we are doing. I can say for AdMob we look at the world like this.
Ad impressions served are ads that we actually serve. Showing different ads is one way to generate impressions, but showing the same ad multiple times leads to more impressions as well. So we will have served 2B actual ad impressions to actual phones as of late this week. We currently serve approximately 600M ad impressions per month.
Available impressions are ad impressions that we could have served. Like most ad networks AdMob does not have a 100% fill rate, currently it is at around 75%. This means that our available impressions number stands at 850M / month. We also call this number "monthly pageviews" since the pageviews are ultimately where the available impressions come from.
The next number people throw around is "unique users". This one is tricky, because it is not always easy to measure unique users in mobile. We'd be very interested to learn how others are arriving at their numbers, and see if there is a way to standardize on what a unique user is in mobile.
The MMA guidelines have a basic start, but are not yet complete in their definition. For example the 2006 MMA guidelines state, “Every mobile phone user has some sort of alpha and/or numeric code (not personal subscriber data like name or phone number) that is sent with each ad request. These unique identifiers are used to determine how many ‘unique users’ view each ad.”
That’s pretty much all it says about unique users, and it is not exactly true. You cannot find these identifiers in all cases, and certainly not worldwide. Based on using only this technique, a large number of users would be unidentifiable. This is one small example but our industry does contain any number of similar issues.
Now let me be the first to say that this is certainly not a complaint about the MMA or any other standards organization. If anything, it is AdMob’s responsibility to get more involved and help contribute to the great work that they are doing. Rather, it’s just a wake up call to all of us that there is still work to be done.
At the end of the day, we all have to be open and explain what our numbers mean and how we are getting at them. The more the industry as a whole is trusted as being reliable, the better it will be for all the players involved: advertisers, publishers, and users.
More importantly, is there any standard way of measuring this vs the other players in the industry? Also, what’s the difference between ad impressions served and available impressions. And what does reach mean in mobile? How should we think about unique users? And how do we measure them? None of this is standardized, either in the definitions themselves or in the third party methods by which these numbers can be validated.
I’m not saying our way is right, but in the interest of transparency its worth looking at what we are doing. I can say for AdMob we look at the world like this.
Ad impressions served are ads that we actually serve. Showing different ads is one way to generate impressions, but showing the same ad multiple times leads to more impressions as well. So we will have served 2B actual ad impressions to actual phones as of late this week. We currently serve approximately 600M ad impressions per month.
Available impressions are ad impressions that we could have served. Like most ad networks AdMob does not have a 100% fill rate, currently it is at around 75%. This means that our available impressions number stands at 850M / month. We also call this number "monthly pageviews" since the pageviews are ultimately where the available impressions come from.
The next number people throw around is "unique users". This one is tricky, because it is not always easy to measure unique users in mobile. We'd be very interested to learn how others are arriving at their numbers, and see if there is a way to standardize on what a unique user is in mobile.
The MMA guidelines have a basic start, but are not yet complete in their definition. For example the 2006 MMA guidelines state, “Every mobile phone user has some sort of alpha and/or numeric code (not personal subscriber data like name or phone number) that is sent with each ad request. These unique identifiers are used to determine how many ‘unique users’ view each ad.”
That’s pretty much all it says about unique users, and it is not exactly true. You cannot find these identifiers in all cases, and certainly not worldwide. Based on using only this technique, a large number of users would be unidentifiable. This is one small example but our industry does contain any number of similar issues.
Now let me be the first to say that this is certainly not a complaint about the MMA or any other standards organization. If anything, it is AdMob’s responsibility to get more involved and help contribute to the great work that they are doing. Rather, it’s just a wake up call to all of us that there is still work to be done.
At the end of the day, we all have to be open and explain what our numbers mean and how we are getting at them. The more the industry as a whole is trusted as being reliable, the better it will be for all the players involved: advertisers, publishers, and users.
posted by admob at 3:44 PM
4 Comments:
Very interesting commentary but why stop at re-defining
Ad impressions
Available impressions
unique users
Mobile is a different medium and there is a need/opportunity for innovative new measurement metrics that are more relevant and leverage the mobile platform capabilities.
To me the most important figure is number of clicks. Impressions mean nothing if no one clicks, and number of users is irrelevant as that's not a criteria for ad revenue.
can i apply the publisher accounts? i dont have any company...can i?
how can i apply these account?
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