comScore

Internet analytics firm comScore has officially launched its new cross-platform reporting system "to provide a more complete view of an online property’s audience as people increasingly access the Web and other content on mobile devices," reports MediaPost.

ComScore's Media Metrix Multi-Platform reporting counts and combines audience from web sites, video and desktop apps, and mobile devices. It was first unveiled last November.

Among those "mobile-centric" publishers enjoying a nice measured-audience boost: Pandora, which saw its comScore audience rise 183% in February according to the new numbers. (Pandora, you'll remember, reported its Q4 mobile revenue was up 111%, growing faster than its mobile listening (up 70%). More in RAIN here.)

Until Media Metrix Mulit-Platform, comScore offered separate ratings for different platforms: the desktop-only Media Metrix top 50 Web properties, its Video Metrix, and Mobile Metrix ratings. MediaPost says Pandora's mobile audience made it something of a standout.

"With the exception of properties like Pandora, the ranking of the top sites remained similar to that when counting desktop-only traffic. The top five multiplatform sites in February -- Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook, and Amazon -- were the same ones as through the standard Media Metrix ratings in January."

Read more in MediaPost here.

At the dawning of IP-delivered radio, it was necessary for listeners to be at a desktop computer with a better-than-average Internet connection. The first webcasters looked forward to when higher connection speeds became more common, and of course to when wireless connectivity could potentially make their medium as convenient and ubiquitous as broadcast radio. Then, webcasters and broadcasters could compete head-to-head, and listeners would naturally gravitate towards the outlets based on high-quality programming, lower spot loads, and the "customization" afforded by the Internet.

Lately it seems (a) consumers in the United States are in fact living more on mobile networks, and (b) leading webcaster Pandora is taking advantage of that.

EMarketer reports that while U.S. consumers still spend twice as much time with "desktop media" as with mobile, "time spent with mobile is growing at 14 times the rate of the desktop." If that rate of growth continues for mobile, within a few short years we may be truly a "wired" yet "mobile" society. Read more from eMarketer here.

Heck, most of us are now apparently sleeping with our mobile phones! Fred Jacobs wrote about this today here.

What's more, comScore's Media Metrix Multi-Platform is a brand new measurement tool that ranks audiences by consolidating usage across various mobile platforms and the web. ComScore says its new rankings show Pandora is "by far the most mobile-centric service on comScore’s list of top 30 propeties" -- more "mobile" even than Twitter, Google, or Facebook! The Washington Post writes, "In September, Pandora’s total digital population was 59.8 million people, good enough for a twenty-third place finish on comScore’s top audience list. More interesting, however, is that the Internet radio business is more of a mobile radio company. Pandora had 48.6 mobile users and 22.6 million desktop users in September, making its mobile audience more than double its web audience." Read more in The Washington Post here.

The matter of uneven royalty obligations aside for a moment, Net radio may be taking a step towards the "even playing field" for which we hoped more than a decade ago.

While we were waiting for Arbitron to finally unveil their long-awaited unified on-air/online radio measurement (see RAIN here), they've announced a deal with comScore and ESPN to measure audio, video, and display across radio, tv, the web, and mobile.

The goal here is to create audience measurement using common metrics on a national and continuous basis, so content providers and marketers can gauge the reach, engagement, and cross-platform duplication of audience.

"The unprecedented size and scope of the project is being driven by the multiplatform measurement requirements of ESPN, which delivers video, audio and display content via television (both in-home and out-of-home), online and mobile video, PC web, mobile web, apps, tablets, digital audio and terrestrial radio" (see yesterday's top story in RAIN here), the companies' announcement read.

The initiative (characterized as "five-platform" as it separates "smartphones" adn "tablets") will integrate "the census and panel-based PC, mobile and TV set-top box measurement capabilities of comScore along with enhanced, single-source, multiplatform measurement capabilities of the Arbitron Portable People Meter (PPM) technology," according to the statement.

Though no roll-out date has been announced, ESPN, comScore and Arbitron will unveil more details October 1-3 at the upcoming Advertising Week convention in New York.

Read the press release here.

New quarterly figures from comScore show 27.6% of mobile subscribers listen to music on their mobile devices. That's up 2.3% from March to June, making it the fastest-growing usage category tracked by comScore.

That said, it's still the least popular activity, coming in behind items like downloading apps (51.4%), playing games (33.4%) and texting (75%).

ComScore also found that the mobile market is more or less divided between Apple and Google. Overall, 47% of the U.S. population now owns a smartphone and 234 million Americans use mobile devices.

TechCrunch has more coverage here.

Smartphone-wielding folks now use apps more than mobile web browsers. So found comScore in a new study, which also discovered that growth in mobile music listening outpaced other activities like playing games or using apps in general.

More than half of mobile subscribers (51.1%) said they used apps, compared to 49.8% who said they used the web browser, according to comScore. App usage grew 1.6% from the three month period ending February 2012 to the three month period ending May 2012.

That growth was surpassed by the usage of music services on mobile devices, which increased 2.2% over the same time period. Now 27% of mobile subscribers say they've listened to music on their device. 

"All of this spells opportunity for big radio brands and smart broadcasters, most of whom have plans and strategies in place for mobile presence," writes Jacobs Media president Fred Jacobs in his jacoBlog (here). "Our stations can be in the starting lineup of the greatest tech game of all time."

TechCrunch has more coverage of comScore's findings here.

A new survey from comScore found that 25.8% of U.S. mobile subscribers said in April that they had listened to music on their phone (smartphone or otherwise). That's up 1.3% from January. comScore does not specify if this means listening to streaming music, listening to local music files, or both.

Meanwhile, more than half of subscribers (50.2%) said they had downloaded apps, an increase of 1.6% since January. comScore's survey also found that Android holds a 50.8% share of the U.S. smartphone market (up 2.2% from January), while Apple holds 31.4% (up 1.9%).

You can find comScore's press release here.