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MW08 – Mobile Panel Question #1 – what mobile data is available to agencies in Canada?

by Phil Barrett

Earlier this week I moderated the mobile panel on digital day at Marketing Week. We had an animated discussion and thanks to our friends at Magnet Mobile, we had a “txt your question” segment where we invited the audience to participate in the discussion.

We managed to answer many questions – but there were too many great questions left unanswered.

Over the next several days I’ll post & respond to all the great questions that we didn’t have time to get to. Feel free to comment & provide your own POV as well.

Q: What mobile data is available to agencies in Canada?

A: Unfortunately there isn’t a lot of data available to marketers and agencies in Canada yet. The CWTA publishes a quarterly report with high level SMS usage stats that include total peer to peer by month and YTD. It also reports on the % of unique users. You can get the details at http://www.cwta.ca. I also summarize & publish the highlights on this blog and you can search the archives for past data

To help fill the data gap, the company I work for has started collecting some behavioural /demographic data on SMS programs that we run in-house which we can anecdotally apply across the board. We also track usage patterns from our own mobile web programs.

For mobile advertising stats, be sure follow Admob -they’re a global leader in mobile advertising and frequently report on their own network usage broken out by country.

The leader in Mobile metrics (m:metrics) was recently bought out by Comscore; however, they don’t offer anything on the Canadian market. Hopefully this will change in the coming year as marketers are hungry for more data.

In summary -there is an opportunity for a data aggregator to develop relationships with Carriers and other ecosystem players in Canada to provide marketers and agencies some much needed insight.  We’re even willing to pay for it :)

  • http://yiibu.com/ Stephanie Rieger

    Another good source of analytics is Opera’s State of the Mobile Web report, published monthly. Canada isn’t typically included but it gives a good roundup of top sites browsed from mobile devices in the US and major Asian and European markets. Quite interesting to see the differences in global traffic.http://www.opera.com/mobile_report/

  • http://yiibu.com Stephanie Rieger

    Another good source of analytics is Opera’s State of the Mobile Web report, published monthly. Canada isn’t typically included but it gives a good roundup of top sites browsed from mobile devices in the US and major Asian and European markets. Quite interesting to see the differences in global traffic.http://www.opera.com/mobile_report/

  • http://yiibu.com/ Stephanie Rieger

    Strangely, I just ran into an excellent set of Canadian stats reflecting top handset distribution by brand…thought I would pass them on too http://stats.getjar.com/statistics/NA-CA/manufacturer/All

  • http://yiibu.com Stephanie Rieger

    Strangely, I just ran into an excellent set of Canadian stats reflecting top handset distribution by brand…thought I would pass them on too http://stats.getjar.com/statistics/NA-CA/manufacturer/All

  • http://www.burningthebacon.com/ phil barrett

    Stephanie – great links and thanks for sharing. Very surprising to see how much share RIM actually has!

  • http://www.burningthebacon.com phil barrett

    Stephanie – great links and thanks for sharing. Very surprising to see how much share RIM actually has!

  • http://www.comscore.com/ Bryan Segal

    Phil, in total agreement with you! comScore is ready to get a service up and running in Canada! How do you suggest we get this moving with some velocity? We are open to several methodologies, and market feedback. Thoughts??

  • http://www.comscore.com Bryan Segal

    Phil, in total agreement with you! comScore is ready to get a service up and running in Canada! How do you suggest we get this moving with some velocity? We are open to several methodologies, and market feedback. Thoughts??

  • http://www.burningthebacon.com/ Phil Barrett

    Bryan – start with what is being offered out of the U.S. and go to the Canadian carriers through the CWTA to build the relationships and data you need to do so.

    i would also speak directly to agencies / your existing comscore customers and ask them what they are looking for.

    Let me know if there is anything i can do to help!

  • http://www.burningthebacon.com Phil Barrett

    Bryan – start with what is being offered out of the U.S. and go to the Canadian carriers through the CWTA to build the relationships and data you need to do so.

    i would also speak directly to agencies / your existing comscore customers and ask them what they are looking for.

    Let me know if there is anything i can do to help!