• September 8, 2008

The Nielsen Company has introduced a new audience-tracking tool combining its mobile usage data with its Prizm research on various lifestyle groupings. The new Mobile-Prizm offering is intended to help advertisers better target mobile audiences.

The Prizm data via Nielsen's Claritas unit includes findings on 66 lifestyle segments including "Young Digerati," "Upper Crust," and "The Cosmpolitans." Nielsen's mobile tracking covers audience sizes and composition across text messaging, the mobile Internet, video, ringtones and other categories.

Through the Mobile-Prizm offering, a marketer could learn, for example, that the "Bohemian Mix" segment--hip, young singles and couples, students and professionals--leads all other categories in mobile Internet use, with 27% surfing the Mobile Web in the last 30 days (compared to an average 16.7% across all other segments).

The move is part of Nielsen's effort to expand its mobile research as the cell phone evolves into a media device. Earlier this year, Nielsen Mobile partnered with Mediamark Research & Intelligence on an integrated database of consumers' mobile and offline media usage.--Mark Walsh