comScore, a leader in measuring the digital world, announced last week the acquisition of M:Metrics, Inc., the recognized leader in mobile measurement.

As a combined company, comScore becomes the immediate leader in measuring the mobile channel.

Although data provided by M:Metrics has not traditionally included Canada, this move is part of a global initiative to be the leader in measuring mobile.

I met up with Bryan Segal, VP of Sales at comScore recently in Kelowna for a CMO conference on Social Media. When asked about measuring mobile, he was quick to say they are committed to providing mobile data in Canada. After the announcement came out last week, I asked him about his his thoughts on the new acquisition:

Yes we are very happy with this news, as our acquisition of M:Metrics makes comScore an immediate market leader in this space. As for Canada we are continually working to bring mobile measurement to the marketplace, and this acquisition of M:Metrics will hopefully facilitate and expedite this process.

This is good news for marketers who are looking for credible and deeper access to usage and experience data within the mobile channel. 

Having a global view of user behaviour across all digital channels will be incredibly useful as we continue to work mobile into our integrated marketing programs.

Here’s a real technology that looks like it’s from the Star Trek holodeck.

Musion has integrated their 3D holographic display technology with Cisco’s TelePrescence’s system to create the world’s first real time virtual presentaion.

You no longer need to travel across the globe to give that pitch to a client or provide a motivational speach to employees in a far away region or country or make that presentation at a conference your really didn’t want to go to anyway.

Click here to see the 11 minute video demonstration of this! You can also get more details on this technology from the Musion website.   

Thanks to Craig Ritchie who found & forwarded this link to me yesterday.

We knew this was coming… but results from a new report from Opera, a Norway-based mobile browsing company even surprised me!

According to the report, 40% of global mobile web traffic starts with popular social-networking sites such as MySpace, hi-5 and facebook. 

That number grows to 60% when you look at U.S. numbers - which is not surprising as Americans tend to spend more time on the mobile web relative to SMS than other markets. No Canadian specific data was published in the report.

It will be interesting to see how mobile-first social networking site and utilities will impact this number in the next 12 months.

Other mobile social media sites to watch are:

• itsmy.mobi (and check out the blog & demo I published back in Feb here)
• bebo.com
• faceparty.com
• friendster (making a come back?)

Interesting enough, Nokia’s own mobile social media site (mosh) did not make the top 10 most visited on any of the countries reported in detail within the report. I guess owning ~40% of the global handset market does not guarantee software or mindshare dominance.

You can read the full report here.

The Globe and Mail recently reported that mobile advertising was years away from a breakthrough. You can read their full article here.

Although I agree we are still in the early stages of mobile advertising, I would suggest that “years” is more likely about two years. Just as we’re seeing exponential growth in leveraging the mobile channel for marketing activities, we are now seeing similar growth in mobile inventory for brands looking to place ads on carrier networks (both on and off-deck).

In Canada, there was virtually no mobile ad inventory to buy a year ago. Today, there’s well over 5 million impressions in mobile inventory to be bought on and off-portal. Although relatively small in comparison to email or the desktop web, this is growing rapidly.

Industry insiders have indicated that the metrics are looking pretty good too.

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I’ve recently installed the Weather Network blackberry widget on my Blackberry 8800. One of the advantages of creating a device specific widget is that you can enrich the user experience beyond a typical mobile website.

The Weather Network is no exception - taking full advantage of the blackberry Java platform to delivery an intuitive and easy to manage widget.

Once you’ve downloaded the widget, you can select your city of choice for weather updates. Coming soon - the ability to add up to 5 more cities - although I believe there should be an unlimited city option like there is on the iphone weather widget by Yahoo.

The neat thing is that once your choice city has been selected, you can get the current temperature by just scrolling over the icon on your blackberry desktop. Clicking on the icon will give you a detailed forecast for that day. Using the options button, you can switch to short and long term forecasts too.

Want to try it out? Point your blackberry mobile web browser to: http://weyebb.pelmorex.com

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Just as marketers are finally figuring out what the heck facebook is and why they should be embracing the platform as a way of reaching & engaging their customers and potential customers, there is a new trend developing that may impact facebook and other social mediums…

Enter social aggregators.

Aggregators won’t replace facebook - but much like RSS feeds have supplemented users visting websites directly, social aggregator services could mean marketers looking to reach and engage people through social media sites like facebook will find a smaller direct audience to engage with.

I’ve signed up with socialthing and others are raving about feedfriend. Both do about the same thing - they take updates from all your social media sites like flickr, facebook, twitter, yelp, linkedin and stream them as one interface in something called a “lifestream.”

The idea is great - instead of checking for updates on multiple sites, you can get them all at once - much like how i use Netvibes or Protopage to aggregate all my RSS feeds.

Personally I get everything I need from Netvibes. 

I can add twitter or facebook status updates to Netvibes… and i don’t really care for the extra features social aggregators include such as comments on the different feeds. When I also consider the fact that most of my friends aren’t as geeked out as I am on ‘web 2.0′, it makes even less sense. Just getting my friends on facebook was a monumental task.

Having said that, the mobile interface for Socialthing is a thing of beauty.

They also have an optimized interface for the iphone which makes checking out lifestreams on the go a pleasant experience.

I have a hard enough time keeping up with my RSS feeds (270 currently) - I’m not sure I have enough time (or care enough) to follow the lifestream of every person i know. Having said that, it could be really useful if you are stalking following a few choice people…

How can marketers get in on this?

Websites got around a similar issue when RSS feeds became popular by not including all the content in the feed - so users who liked the lead content were driven back to the site… where sponsored ads could be displayed in all their glory.

One suggestion - build your own branded social aggregator…. and include your own relevant content as one of the feeds.

I could see this working really well for Automotive, Financial, Pharma, Retail… well pretty much any brand looking to participate in & influence a person’s lifestream.

The Globe and Mail reported today that Microsoft is again talking to Yahoo. Get the full article here.

Seen largely as a way to counter any potential Google and Yahoo advertising partnership, a new Microsoft relationship would bolster their rating and access to the market while giving Yahoo shareholder value without raising too many regulatory eyebrows around anti-trust.

The long term play

Although still relatively small compared to the desktop web market, partnering with Yahoo now means Microsoft can also get access to their leading mobile platform.

Within two years mobile advertising in Canada will include inventory for marketers that will reach beyond Carrier on-deck portals. Already we are seeing early versions of mobile search (with proximity capabilities), mobile video, and mobile social networking sites with built-in ad-serving abilities. This market is going to be massive.

It also sets up the possibility of another takeover attempt in the not so distant future.

The CWTA just released updated stats for March 2008:

1. 1.4 billion text / SMS messages were sent in March alone! This is up from 1.2 billion in December 2007.  We are definitely trending towards 20 billion for the year (that would be double 2007 numbers)
2. 42% of messages sent from unique individuals - up from 37% in September 2007. This is really significant because it means the same people aren’t just texting more… we are actually increasing adoption & usage as a whole.

With reasonable data plans finally becoming available in Canada (as low as $7 / month for unlimited on a non-PDA device), we should be expecting huge increases in the mobile web /mobile widgets this year as well.

Here’s a great video on the history and potential future of the mobile phone.

Thanks to Geoff Thomas for sending me this one!

It’s hard to believe that shortcodes for SMS or “text messaging” is only 5 years old in Canada.

It’s also hard to believe that many marketers are still largely ignorant as to what or how SMS marketing can be incorporated into a multi-channel campaign.

For those who think SMS is not yet ready for the masses, consider this:

• 10.1 billion SMS messages were sent in Canada last year - over 1 billion in December alone
• That’s more than double (~4.3b) from 2006
• Which is more than double (~2.1) from 2005
• There are over 20 million Canadians with at least one mobile device now
• Penetration of mobile is as high as 80% in urban areas

SMS marketing is already a mass medium.

Mobile messaging is evolving. MMS (or multi-media messaging) is finally going mainstream. Rogers now has an all you can eat plan for $15 / month. 2d codes are also coming to a broader audience as a few local mobile shops are working on some retail pilots.

Tonight the CWTA is putting on a party celebrating 5 years of text messaging in Canada.

I’ll also be celebrating what is to come!