Overview of mobile analytics and my implementation experience at R.H. Donnelley

1. Mobile Analytics Todd Chenard

2. My Background Sr. Manager Website Analytics at IHS Cheaptickets.com (‘03 – ’05) DexKnows.com (‘05 – ‘09) IHS.com (’09 – Current) Involved in the deployment of the DexKnows mobile platforms from the Spring of 2008 through December 2009.

3. US Mobile Market at a Glance 228M individual mobile subscribers1 6.1% year over year subscriber growth1 As point of comparison, 220M Internet users2 1 ComScore M:Metrics for 3 months ending October 2008 2 Nielsen/NetRatings in June 2008

4. Mobile Market is Rapidly Changing Smartphones! Ever increasing Wi-Fi coverage and faster carrier networks, e.g. 3G and the coming 4G ‘All you can eat’ data plans Carrier ‘walled gardens’ slowly coming down

6. 106% year over year growth1

7. 22M subscribers with smartphones, which represents 9.7% penetration.1ComScore M:Metrics for 3 months ending October 2008

9. Smartphones represent the majority of Internet usage from mobile devices. 90% of mobile traffic (hits) on DexKnows.com comes from smartphones. 51% of traffic hits from the iPhone alone.

10. Due to the ‘on the go’ nature of mobile, the traffic is mostly incremental and therefore very little cannibalization of PC traffic.

13. JavaScript not available or very limited in WAP/xHTML interfaces

14. Referrer not available for pixel based tracking in WAP/xHTML.

15. IP Address can change several times during a session (switching between towers and/or Wi-Fi) or the IP reflects the network gateway, e.g. Blackberry.

16. SMS tracking is strictly server based. No image capability for 1-byte image send from client device.

19. Omniture offers mobile reports in SiteCatalyst 14, a non-javascript pixel tag, and recently announced iPhone App tracking.

20. WebTrends offers mobile reports and non-javascript pixel WAP tracking.

21. Coremetrics 2009 now offers mobile analytics.

22. Mobile specific analytics provider, e.g. Mobilytics, Admob Analytics, Amethon Analytics, Bango Analytics

23. These vendors are better at tracking across almost all mobile platforms and have better visit ‘sessionization’ and unique visitor tracking.

25. How did R.H. Donnelley implement mobile analytics? Details: For WAP/XHTML, we implemented our custom pixel based solution. This was possible because our pixel based solution does not require JavaScript. For SMS, we are triggering our custom pixel based calls from the application server. For the Java and iPhone apps, we are using the custom pixel based tracking. Some of our app actions are ‘offline’ and those tracking events are queued for the next online call.

27. ‘Location Awareness’ device functionality and applications will rapidly grow. Can your website use location awareness on mobile or in a PC browser?

28. SMS (the ugliest ‘walled garden’) will slowly die over the next few 5-10 years. Replaced by IM services and/or Twitter.

30. Start planning smartphone optimized browser versions of your website, e.g. iPhone (1st), Blackberry (2nd), Android (3rd).

31. Review whether downloaded apps make sense for your business, e.g. iPhone, Blackberry, or Android.

33. Match the user agents to a comprehensive list of mobile user agents such as WURFL or Device Atlas: (http://wurfl.sourceforge.net/ or http://deviceatlas.com/)

34. Calculate % of hits from mobile devices. This will provide a rough idea of overall mobile usage. Further breakout % of hits coming from smartphones by grouping user agents.

36. Even though mobile Internet access speeds are rapidly increasing, still minimize the size of your pixel based calls to avoid a slow user experience. Use coded values for custom parameters when possible, and only send the parameters necessary.

37. Mobile devices are all very different in their browser functionality, JavaScript support, etc. Test your mobile analytics using various devices. Borrow your fellow employees mobile phones instead of purchasing a bunch of test phones.