For the last 6 months we have been changing the direction of Mobilytics. We have recently entered AppClix into beta, which we consider to be the ULTIMATE mobile application analytics and reporting solution available. With that change we are expanding our blog to include posts and news on all mobile analytics, not just mobile web related. Over the next few days we will be putting up a number of posts we have written recently that have been waiting in the queue.

While developing AppClix, we have done extensive research and testing of our competitors applications. In order to really understand these products, we also developed a number of iPhone applications through another company of mine called Millennium Studios. We are currently developing Blackberry App World and Android Market apps and are looking for beta testers in those areas as well.

Four of these apps are now in the iTunes store and are producing invaluable data for our development and testing. Stay tuned for more posts about AppClix and some detailed analysis of the mobile app analytics Landscape.

AppClix is not just an application analytics solution like Flurry, Pinch Media, Localytics, MobClix and others. (Yes, as usual we are not afraid to link to the competition.)

AppClix is a complete analytics solution that includes detailed sales reporting, and campaign tracking. Some of the features we have that others don’t are:

• Automatic download of iTunes reports from iTunes Connect for complete sales analysis and reporting
• Click through tracking with conversion for in app and mobile web ads. We also support traditional web ads which we believe will be huge for iPad application marketing.
• Reporting on Reviews and Rankings of apps across mutiple app stores in every country available.
• reporting on how price affects conversions and downloads
• reporting on how changes to descriptions affect sales
• reporting on how ranking and review affect sales
• reporting on referrers when purchases are made from web sites.

These features do NOT require the installation of our library in the mobile application. Signup is instant and reporting is available immediately.

As for our Analytics, we also offer quite a few metrics and features again not available in others.

• Additional metrics such as
• conversion rate
• trial to paid upgrade rates
• update rates that show what percentage of users update to new versions and from what version they updated.
• days from last use to new version update
• Simple OpenFeint integration – We have created a simple OpenFeint service that simply drops into the OpenFeint library for instant analytics integration using same syntax and formats as existing OpenFeint code. For those of you who don’t know about OpenFeint, it is a great community, leaderboard, achievement and application cross promotion solution for iPhone games and apps. We have tried a few solutions, but the OpenFeint community is the largest and has the most robust solution.
• Real Time Analytics! – Yes, this is possible. We are currently using the Amazon EC2 infrastructure for 95% of our solution and can easily scale to accomodate real time stats. While some of the summary data is updated hourly, event and user data is immediately available. Through our testing, we have been amazed at the lag time some vendors are providing. Data in our Pinch Media integration into the DoodleCopter app has not been updated since February 27^th! Yes, 11 days!

(click to enlarge)
They finally put up a note about this, and we will be commenting in additional post shortly.

• Lastly, AppClix is also available in a dedicated and customer installed solution. Yes, you can purchase AppClix and install on your own servers. No need to compile a third party dependency int your precious apps. (Google AppLoop for reasons why). AppClix is avilable as a complete Amaon EC2 paid AMI so you don’t even need your own hardware. More on this to come.

We’re excited about the new blog and AppClix. We look forward to our reader’s feedback, and the continued growth of this market.

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Well according to Dennis at Wap Review, and a Bango newsletter I got today, Verizon has installed the Novarra Transcoder on their network.

The largest US mobile carrier, Verizon Wireless has started funneling traffic between Verizon feature phones and the  web through a transcoder from Novarra.  Verizon calls the service “Optimized View” and has added promotional information and a FAQ to their customer website  There is also a page on the carrier’s developer site which has links to a opt-out form and to a  PDF document detailing the rules that the transcoder uses to determine which sites to transcode.

Essentially what this means for mobile analytics is that you are not getting the correct phone information. Rather than seeing “SonyEricsson K770” in your reports, you might see “Novarra-Vision/7.3”.

While this may be a problem for some mobile analytics vendors (see http://bangoserviceblog.wordpress.com/2008/11/18/verizon-transcodes-mobile-websites/), it is not an issue for us.

We built Mobilytics knowing that transcoders and other exceptions exist. As long as the vendor adheres to some basic guidelines (which almost all do), we are able to still report the correct information. We simply add some info to our exception engine, and all is well.

A similar issue exists for Blackberry Phones, the Google Transcoder, the Opera Mini browser, and other various sites and transcoders. This is why Mobile is different. Regular web analytics can’t account for these exceptions and provide incorrect information.

I want to thank Bango for pointing out this issue so we could update our exceptions engine. Nothing needs to be done by the Mobilytics customer for continued accurate reporting. While you will be seeing a lot of “Mozilla’s” and “Novarra’s” at Bango, expect to see less of them here in the coming days.

You can read up on the controversal issue of transcoding at some of the following links. Since Verizon is giving you the option of getting white listed, you should do that to ensure the user is seeing your site correctly. It’s not needed for Mobilytics.

http://wapreview.com/blog/?p=536

http://wurfl.sourceforge.net/manifesto/

http://wapreview.com/blog/?p=516

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One of the things we have found over the last 6 months, is how many people don’t understand why mobile specific analytics products are needed.

Both from an accurate tracking and marketing perspective, mobile analytics can make a huge difference in your everyday business decisions.

I’ve put together an in-depth white paper that is the “everything you need to know about mobile analytics” of white papers, to explain what this is all about.

In it I cover the following topics in detail:

• Brief history of web analytics
• What makes mobile different, and why traditional analytics won’t work
• What mobile web analytics is
• What to look for in a solution provider

Without getting too technical, I explain how vendors do their tracking, and what the pros and cons of each are. I do not compare the specific vendors, only the methods they use for unique id tracking. No vendors are mentioned, and it is not a “sales pitch” oriented paper.

At the end of the day, anyone evaluating a solution should put the tracking code from multiple vendors on their site and review the results. The process of viewing the reports in the vendor’s interface, and the report data will speak for themselves.

Download our Actionable and Accurate Analytics on the Mobile Internet white paper, and let us know what you think. Pass it along to others as well.

Our goal is to educate the public, and to collect information that will make Mobilytics an even better product than it is.

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At Mobile Internet World a few weeks ago, I was particularly impressed by one member of a panel I had attended. Bob Walczak of Ringleader Digital appeared to be a “tell it like it is” kind of guy, and I found him extremely refreshing and entertaining.

Well apparently I was wrong. He appears to be more of a “Tell it like you want them to think it is” kind of guy.

Bob has publicly taken credit for a “new” technology they invented called “media stamp”. The weird thing is that it sounds exactly like the process we use to uniqely identify users for our analytics. This technology was discussed at a Mobile Monday panel I sat on back in April that Bob attended.

Since cookies and Javascript are rare on mobile browsers, we developed a way to create a unique fingerprint for users without them. Essentially we take all the information we receive from the carriers, all the information we have about the phone model and it’s capabilities, and other information derived from the actual browsing experience, to create this fingerprint.

We then provide each unique ID with a score from 1–100 which gets attached. The score is based on how sure we are of the uniqueness of the user, and how sure we are that we can identify them when they return.

While any claim that Bob makes that he can 100% identify unique users is false, we can still uniquely identify a very high percentage of unique users. This is why we give them a score.

In a press release yesterday, Ringleader made the following claim:

By “stamping” a mobile device, Ringleader Digital enables agencies and brands to identify unique visitors and track their clicks, impressions, and acquisitions across all browsing sessions, mobile sites, and wireless carriers. Media Stamp is the first technology to standardize these ad serving and analytic capabilities in mobile, which were previously only available for online advertising.

Sorry Bob, you were not the first, and you knew it.

“The potential of mobile advertising has been constrained because agencies and publishers have not had the real-time visibility or analytics required to validate the return on investment for mobile ad campaigns” said Bob Walczak, CEO of Ringleader Digital. “Media Stamp is reinventing mobile advertising by quickly gaining a strong understanding of user preferences and enabling mobile advertisers to provide targeted, relevant advertisements to growing and active mobile audiences.”

“Reinventing” is an appropriate term for what Ringleader has done, since we already invented it. Mobilytics is still the only “impartial” third-party ad tracking tool that can use this fingerprint to track “across” ad networks.

Conversion tracking capabilities from Media Stamp analyze how impressions/click results are connected to actions. Media Stamp can also associate the user’s behavior to each page that included a specific served ad – enabling publishers to identify all pages that contributed to a visitor’s conversion. Ringleader Digital is also expanding Media Stamp capabilities to enable real-time delivery of targeted ads by correlating behavioral and engagement patterns to deliver targeted and actionable advertisements.

While it is great to see them using this technology on the ad-serving side, we have been doing it with ad campaign tracking for over 6 months.

You can see Ringleader’s press release here.

I need to go check on our patent application…

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Things went so well for us at Mobile Internet World, that we decided to take a last minute booth at ad:tech in New York City next week.

They have a special area for mobile companies called the “Go Mobile Zone”, that is set up right outside the keynotes.

If your attending, please stop by for a demo of Mobilytics. If you need a free pass for the Expo, let us know.

Oh, and I hear Bango will be there as well if you want to compare our products in the flesh…

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“Hey you guys are like Google Analytics for Mobile!”

One of the things I’d like to track with Mobilytics is how often we hear that.

Yes, Mobilytics is just that. It has been designed to be the simplest, most powerful, most accurate mobile analytics solution available. Our goal was to provide a significant number of metrics and reports, while keeping the interface, simple and fast.

We also strive to be the single place where you can get all of the information you need to evaluate and optimize your site traffic. Everything from campaign management, to search engine position rankings.

There is no better compliment than to be compared to a giant in the industry!

Come visit us next week at Mobile Internet World in Boston if you are there. We will be in booth 409.

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At first glance I was kind of excited to hear about this white paper. But when the title page loaded with the Bango logo on it, i realized what it was. While I don’t want to take anything away from the exhaustive work that Peggy Anne Salz did on this, it is just not in my personality to stand by while more questionable information is spread.

Peggy does mention in small print that Bango is a supporter of her blog, but I’m not sure who they think they are kidding with this. Clearly this is a lead generation tool for Bango that she was probably paid to write. In order to download the white paper, Bango requires you to fill out a form so they can hit you up with relentless auto responders and drop you in their sales pipeline. This is fine, but let’s not pretend it is something else.

Since most of you will not want to hear from them, I thought I’d just share the link so you can skip that step and download it directly.

The white paper can be downloaded from here.

First let me say again that Peggy put a lot of effort into this, and I applaud her for that. It looks like ti took a lot of work.

So let’s dig in a bit…

On Page 12, she states the following:

I chose Bango and AdMob as two best examples of analytics packages on the market today.

In the campaigns below, I also show the procedure for inserting the campaign tracking code.

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The Mobile Internet World conference is Oct, 21–23 in Boston, MA. In addition to some great sessions, the expo contains a wide array of mobile internet related service providers.

Mobile Visions has taken a booth and we will be doing demos of Mobilytics and Mobivity on the 22^nd, and 23^rd. If your attending the conference, please stop by an introduce yourself. Let us show you why Mobilytics is the most accurate mobile analytics tool available. We’re at booth 409.

Today is the last day to register for free expo passes if you are in the area and not attending the conference.

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I couldn’t resist. I came across this today on the Support Analytics blog. I thought the timing was ironic.

A little lighter side for a Wednesday!  I Hope you got a chuckle out of this one, like I did.

Warning: Don’t try this at the office.  Fictitious numbers can lead to a lack of income/employment, divorce (if applicable), and ultimately, complete distress. 

You can’t just make this stuff up!

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Seriously… Not a day goes by where I don’t hear from customers and prospects about how “Bango has relationships with the carriers.” and that’s why their analytics are the most accurate.

Like Joe Biden did to Sarah Palin in last night’s debate, I think it’s time to point out the innacuracies of our competitor’s claims.

In a comment on Media Post today, Sarah Keefe, VP Marketing at Bango continued to make this claim as a reason to use their analytics. While I don’t doubt that Bango has relationships with carriers, it certainly does not make their analytics more accurate.

Bango provides mobile analytical data on milions of consumers, across 306 networks worldwide (from last month’s data). We have billing relationships with operators which give us an added information to help with identification but we also provide rich data about users and user behavior across every network we measure.

These same customers and prospects that hear this claim for Bango, are extremely uneasy with the fact that Bango won’t disclose who those carriers are, or provide more information.

To me it’s simple. If you don’t have a relationship with every carrier in the world, then your analytics can’t be right! What’s the point in claiming that you have relationships with only 30 carriers (which is what I’ve been told by them), when you also claim you are seeing traffic from 306 networkds worldwide??

How are you tracking the other 276? And to add to that question, why are you only seeing traffic from 306 carriers? We are seeing thousands of carriers from 212 countries. I guess Bango’s “Unidentified”  and “Unclassified” carriers contain the other few thousand!

And here is a report of Operators and Countries on a day when a client of ours ran a comparison test.

Yes, that’s 29% UNCLASSIFIED!

To top that off, look at these numbers. Keep in mind that this test website was built for testing purposes only, and the traffic was sent by setting up a pay-per-click AdMob campaign. There was no traffic to this site from any other source. The purpose was to compare Mobilytics with AdMob and Bango.

Bango’s top 10 countries:

I’m thinking of moving the family to beautiful “Unidentified”. I hear they have awesome weather. They must if 36% of the mobile population of the world lives there!

Here’s our top 10 from the same day (click on it to zoom since there is too much info ):

And here’s their top 10 Operators (the ones they have the relationships with )

I wonder if I can get a good rate plan with “Unclassified”?? Do they have a 3G network? Can you hear me now??

But what really gets me, is this claim of accuracy because of these relationships.

Here are the facts as they relate to this particlular test.

Admob charged us for 1,667 clicks.

The assumption would be then that there were somewhere around 1,667 visits to the site. Visits unfortunately is something that Bango does not even track. But “Unique Visitors” is always less than “visits” since a person can come back later in the day. What is really amazing to me as well is that AdMob’s analytics numbers don’t even come close to the advertising reports! They even contradict themselves. 

Here are the results:

If Admob charged me for 1,667 clicks, then how could there be 2,884 visits? Clearly they are double counting!

How can Bango be showing 600 less pageviews than us? And 400 Unique Visitors less!

And AdMob is showing 3,618 pageviews??? Are they counting the internal ad redirects or something?

This is why I urge everyone to evaluate all of our services side by side. We will provide you with a download of every page view so that you can compare. I challenge our competition to do the same.

For a while now I have backed-off of Bango specifically, but enough already. If anyone is interested in doing a side-by-side test as an impartial third-party evaluator, we welcome it. We have a number of people in the industry doing just that right now. I have tremendous respect for Ray Anderson and Bango, but these claims need to stop, or they need to provide more details. Same goes for AdMob. Marketers are relying on our products to save them money and help direct their spending. How can that be done with such wrong information?

Oh, and cooincidentally, Andrew from Bango signed up for Mobilytics yesterday. I wonder if that’s to check out the competition, or to get accurate analytics on their mobile web site

I’m sure I’ll be hearing from them soon, so I’ll ask…

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These screen shots show the data for all 3 analytics vendors for the same period, as well as the AdMob ad report. If anyone wants more information or proof, let me know.

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