• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, August 21, 2013

A lack of standard metrics in mobile is often cited as one of the barriers to higher levels of ad spending in the medium. That problem leads to fragmentation in mobile analytics, with a host of different vendors offering different measurement solutions.

A Forrester study this week showed that while many brands have tools in place, less than half (46%) of online professionals have a complete solution.

When it comes to establishing uniform metrics, panelists at MediaPost's Mobile Insider Summit  suggested that more standardization is needed around contextual factors like screen size, device type, and how people are using their devices to deliver better campaigns and content. “Standards for that sort of thing are really lacking,” said Josh Levine, national director of mobile for CPG and Finance, Yahoo. He added that responsive design can help with that effort from a technical standpoint, but that it’s not a “be all, end all” answer.

Brett Leary, vice president of mobile marketing, Digitas, said that to sort through all the disparate, contextual data mobile pulls in, the agency has begun to develop its own attribution tool as an alternative to third-party services from Google or others.

By sifting through that data, Digitas hopes to find the “moments that matter” to get an ad in front of a mobile user at the right time and right place. But he acknowledged that getting all that data “into a nice neat dashboard is a difficult thing to do.”