• by Joe Mandese , October 31, 2008

LOS ANGELES -- A top Nielsen Mobile executive unveiled the first look at a new product here Thursday that measures and ranks mobile Web sites based on the number of ad impressions they generate, and it shows the dominant player is the same as the wired Web: Yahoo. Speaking at MediaPost's OMMA Mobile conference, Nic Covey, director of insights at Nielsen Mobile, gave a preview of the new Mobile AdRelevance database, a mobile version of Nielsen Online's online ad-tracking service AdRelevance, and said that Yahoo Games is the No. 1 ad-supported mobile Web destination, followed by sister verticals Yahoo Finance and Yahoo News.

The data, which is from Mobile AdRelevance's July 2008 database, indicates that the ad-supported mobile Web destinations tend to be news, information, or entertainment-oriented media brands--as opposed to the top rankers in overall mobile Web traffic, which are dominated by communications, search and navigation destinations.

The No. 1 destination in terms of total mobile Web traffic is Yahoo Mail, followed by Google Search, The Weather Channel, Gmail, MSN Hotmail, and Google Maps.

Covey said the new AdRelevance data would begin finding its way into Nielsen client hands over the next couple of weeks, but he did not indicate how it might be used, or how it might impact the nascent mobile Web advertising marketplace.

And by all indications at the OMMA Mobile conference Thursday, that market is truly nascent, at least in the U.S. That's true both from a brand spending point of view as well as a consumer's awareness perspective.

In fact, Covey also revealed data showing that less than a third (29%) of all mobile data users in the U.S. currently recall seeing some form of mobile advertising while using a mobile data service.

Interestingly, the story is even worse when it comes to the oh-so-hot text-messaging world. Only 16% of mobile services subscribers recall seeing any SMS advertising.

That's reflected in Nielsen's top rankings of "SMS brands"--most of which are dominated by media, entertainment or information services, not consumer marketing brands. The one exception, Covey said, was Coca-Cola, which has broken into the top rankings based on the success of its "My Coke Rewards" text-messaging program.

"A million people are doing this every month, so kudos to Coke for doing that," Covey said.

 

	Top Mobile Web Destinations Ranked By Total Users	Top Mobile Web Destinations Ranked By Ad Impressions Served
1	Yahoo Mail	Yahoo Games
2	Google Search	Yahoo Finance
3	The Weather Channel	Yahoo News
4	Gmail	ABC News
5	MSN Hotmail	MTV
6	Google Maps	Comedy Central
7	ESPN	MSN Hotmail
8	AOL Mail	NBA
9	iTunes	Yahoo Music
10	Mapquest	ESPN
Source: Nielsen Mobile, Nielsen Mobile AdRelevance, July 2008.