RESTON, Virginia, February 16 /PRNewswire/ --

- Census-level messaging measurement can evaluate messaging campaigns while improving operator business intelligence systems

comScore, Inc. (Nasdaq: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, and Mobile Enterprise Ltd., today announced that the firms will partner to offer analytics tools to plan, evaluate and manage mobile messaging campaigns while allowing operators to protect consumers from fraud, spam and abuse. These tools will integrate with comScore's powerful syndicated digital media measurement service to provide consistent metrics and analysis across messaging and browsing behaviour.

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While messaging has become enormously popular for communications between people and now between people and brands, the tools that mobile operators need to measure and manage it are typically in their infancy, said Tony Riley, CEO, Mobile Enterprise. The power of messaging; which is pervasive as a medium and commerce solution, requires the highest level of accountability for measuring effectiveness. This must be balanced by the need for operators to protect their customers from fraud, spam and abuse so they may comply with and mitigate increasing regulation.

According to comScore, mobile messaging is used by 80 per cent of people in Western Europe (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UK) and is increasingly being used as a marketing platform, with 49 per cent of mobile phone users reporting they received an advert via SMS in November. comScore reports that 8 per cent of people who received an advert via SMS in November responded to it.

Eight percent is an impressive response rate, and that's without sophisticated tools for marketers to use to target an individual based on even their most basic demographic details, observed Paul Goode, senior vice president, comScore Mobile Census Solutions. The mobile messaging insight that we can offer to mobile operators and marketers will allow this medium to realize its full potential by taking the guesswork and waste out of messaging campaigns.

Mobile Enterprise, which provides tools to mobile operators to analyse messaging and mobile transactions, has partnered with comScore to measure mobile messaging and provide syndicated audience data for operators and media owners. Anonymised demographic details and mobile content usage data from comScore's leading mobile media measurement services are fused to Mobile Enterprise's messaging data to create a rich user profile that can be used to target messaging based on characteristics about the consumer and their mobile usage patterns.

Together, the companies will allow both media owners and operators to understand the demographics and behaviour of participants in messaging campaigns and will be able to measure a campaign's effectiveness, down to five-minute intervals. In addition, the service manages opt-out and failure messages, enabling compliance with regulations and improved efficiencies.

The cost of mobile messaging campaigns extends far beyond messaging fees, commented Riley. There is also a high price associated with customer support needed to address complaints and billing errors, lost revenues from billing reconciliation errors, as well as the potential of losing customers who are annoyed by spam or other irrelevant messages. There is also a threat of additional costs to support the regulation that is inevitable without sophisticated operator tools to improve machine-originated messaging and protect consumers.

Working with mobile operators and industry bodies, comScore and Mobile Enterprise have developed cross-operator solutions that offer complete visibility into messaging campaigns, offering a comprehensive view of all messages received or sent by the operator's own subscribers in the context of the market and channel. All messages are categorized by: message type, sector, client brand, campaign, aggregator/agency, volume, value and response rate. The resulting data can be re-used by mobile operators to improve business intelligence systems, such as CRM, customer service and operations.

Syndicated mobile market intelligence for messaging campaigns has been a blind spot in the mobile analytics business, commented Goode. Mobile Enterprise's work with network operators has established the firm as the leading source for business intelligence for mobile messaging. When combined with comScore's powerful syndicated digital media measurement tools, we can deliver what both marketers and mobile operators desperately need: reliable metrics to target and segment audiences, complete transparency in the evaluation of mobile messaging campaign effectiveness and consumer protection from unwanted or malicious messages.

Please visit comScore at Mobile World Congress, Hall 2.1, Stand 2.1C17.

About comScore

comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR) is a global leader in measuring the digital world and preferred source of digital marketing intelligence. For more information, please visit http://www.comscore.com

Jaimee Steele of comScore, Inc., +1-206-757-1360, jsteele@comscore.com / Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20080115/COMSCORELOGO