• by May 4, 2011

Two years ago, Nielsen Co. combined its media data expertise with Catalina Marketing's research into shopper behavior to form Nielsen Catalina Solutions. The combined entity¹s first offering was a service measuring TV industry return on investment.

Now, mobile ad company 4INFO said it is combining Nielsen Catalina's tracking of shopping purchases from 60 million households with its own tracking data from over 70 million unique mobile users. The result, called "groundbreaking" by Mike Nazzaro, CEO of Nielsen Catalina Solutions, will enable consumer packaged goods companies to track how mobile advertising influences actual consumer shopping behavior.

"This combines Nielsen¹s more traditional measurement model with specific targeting in mobile, which is a first," Ray Colwell, chief revenue officer of 4INFO, told Online Media Daily.

"Instead of panel-based data, users are placed into anonymized audience segments," said Colwell, an online ad veteran who joined 4INFO last month after stints as vice president at ad networks Collective and Transpera.

To create the anonymized audience segments used in the mobile ad serving process, a third party unidentified by 4INFO matches the Nielsen Catalina and 4INFO data, aggregates it, and unlocks demographic info, buying behavior, and other behavioral attributes.

Advertisers and agencies can then buy these audience segments across 4INFO¹s AdHaven audience network or directly from publishers. In addition to display, 4INFO offers mobile ad opportunities in apps, SMS, and video, which Colwell called "the first time Nielsen¹s mobile research combined with Catalina data has been used across all mobile channels with any scale."

Colwell said that at any time during or after a campaign, Nielsen Catalina can analyze the lift in purchase behavior within the audience segment served by the campaign. And 4INFO¹s AdHaven platform can provide in real-time "all of the standard reporting metrics -- such as response rate, engagement rate, page-views."

Colwell said 4INFO expects to announce clients for the new service soon. The company, he said, is in the negotiation stage with its existing roster of Fortune 100 clients.