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Nearly a quarter of all cell phone users in the U.S. say they've seen an advertisement on their phones in the past 30 days, according to a report from Nielsen Mobile, which tracks these trends.

About half of those who saw advertising on their mobile phones in the past month responded to an ad, the report said. In the fourth quarter, there was a big jump in the number or people reporting that they had spotted advertisements on their mobile phones. In fact, this figure rose 38 percent to 58 million users who said they saw advertising on their cell phone, compared with only 42 million who said they saw advertising on their phones in the second quarter of 2007. Nielsen surveyed 22,000 active mobile data users in its fourth-quarter survey.

Mobile operators and content providers have been talking about the promise of mobile advertising for more than a year. The hope is that advertising can help boost revenue for both operators and content providers. Consumer advocates also hope it will mean more content for users at a lower cost.

But service providers have been cautious about adding advertising too quickly, because they are afraid that bombarding customers with ads will result in a backlash. But the Nielsen report offers some encouraging news that should help ease these worries.

According to the report, almost a third of people who use data services such as text messaging or Web surfing say they don't mind advertising so long as it lowers the cost of their overall bill. And roughly 13 percent said they were in favor of advertising if it improved content. And 14 percent of those responding said they didn't mind ads if they were relevant to their interests.

Big Internet companies, such as Microsoft and Google, are already adapting their advertising products to work on mobile devices. In December, Microsoft launched mini banner ads optimized for cell phone browsers and screen size when people visit mobile MSN portal. And in September, Google launched AdSense for Mobile, which will allow marketers to place contextual ads on sites viewed via mobile devices.

Last week, The Wall Street Journal had a story about Arbitron's People Meter, a new portable device that helps the radio ratings measurement company determine the exact amount of time a user spends listening to particular radio stations. Radio stations insert an inaudible signal that only the device picks up, and testers are supposed to carry the devices at all times, so regardless of where they listen (work, home, car, grocery store), the People Meter knows. This is more accurate than the old way of asking radio listeners to record their habits in a paper diary--users tended not to record every station change or stations they heard inadvertently.

In Philadelphia, one of the first two markets where the People Meter is being used, it's finding that users listen to more radio than was previously thought, switch stations more often, and listen to more classic rock and less urban contemporary. (Although the latter point may be because many younger users aren't carrying the meters as much as Arbitron expected--a problem that's caused the company to offer refunds if it can't meet promised sample sizes.)

Arbitron's also tested the device for use with in-store radio networks such as the InStore Broadcasting Network (in use in more than 12,000 stores nationwide) and Mall Radio Network, and TV and Internet ratings giant Nielsen has similar technology.

Imagine if content owners, working with Arbitron or Nielsen or another enterprising company, could convince digital distributors (like iTunes) to insert watermarks into their songs. Then, these companies could measure every time a user listened to a downloaded song--a computer, an iPod connected to an external source (I'm not sure if it could possibly work with headphones), a file burned to CD and subsequently re-ripped and traded. Instead of relying on DRM, content owners and distributors could allow unfettered trading, create some sort of pooled payment system--a sort of tax on blank CDs and Internet access and music software, for instance--then compensate copyright holders based on actual usage.

The biggest problem: most shared songs are ripped from CDs. And it's too late to insert any sort of watermarks into those CDs. Horse, barn door, open. So any such plan would cover only content distributed through approved downloading services. Then again, Apple has sold more than 3 billion songs through iTunes, so it's not exactly insignificant.

Also, it's in the interest of radio stations to cooperate with Arbitron, as that's how advertising dollars are allocated. In the case of digital music, many of the distributors are actually trying to sell something else--usually the hardware devices or associated software necessary to play the files. (That's certainly the case with Apple and Microsoft, and other device makers, like Nokia, are getting into the act as well.) They don't really care what happens to the files after they're downloaded. So any such push would probably have to come from content owners, who aren't exactly known for promoting cutting-edge digital technology.

Clearly, social-networking metrics are the new black. It seems like just about everyone wants to know whether Facebook will pass MySpace--or whether there are any trendy, fast-moving start-ups that you ought to be monitoring so that you can start up a profile and amass a healthy friends list before it gets too trendy.

Last month, ComScore released numbers pertaining to social networking's worldwide growth. Now, Nielsen/NetRatings' PR team has released its latest set of figures that track how quickly the top social-networking sites are growing. The results are divided into three different categories of social media: social networks, blogs (and blog platforms) and video sites.

It looks like Nielsen has tweaked its criteria over the past month, because the lists are strikingly different from analogous ones it released for June: in those, sites like YouTube and Blogger were included among social-networking sites as well as in the "top blogs" and "top video sites" categories. It made for a rather confusing list, seeing as you had TypePad alongside Facebook under the "social networking" umbrella. Now, it looks like the main social-networking site list consists exclusively of community sites.

A couple of the names on the July list are riding the word-of-mouth wave: kiddie network Club Penguin, for example, was just purchased by Disney; Classmates.com is rumored to be heading for an IPO; and newcomer Buzznet, a music-based site, is just making its debut. Facebook, of course, is on the rise, but interestingly enough the results indicate that LinkedIn has grown twice as fast over the past year.

The aforementioned second category, "top blogs," is still a little bit confusing because it does indeed include destination blogs (like TMZ.com, Perez Hilton, and Engadget) and the major blog host platforms like Six Apart's TypePad and Google's Blogger. So there's a little bit of disconnect, but it does give you the gist of things: Xanga's shrinking, WordPress is growing fast, and way too many people read Perez Hilton and TMZ at the office. But we knew all that already.

Then there's the third list, of top video sites. In the top spot is (who else?) YouTube, followed by the MySpace video platform in its older form. I'm guessing that the new MySpaceTV portal hasn't been around for nearly long enough to be included in the figures. Also in the rankings are the corresponding video portals for major tech hubs' home pages (AOL, Yahoo, Microsoft) as well as big-media-backed start-ups like video-sharing site Veoh and comedy site Funny Or Die.

Update 12:20 p.m. PDT: The headline on table No. 3 says "June 2007" but those figures are in fact for July.

Don't you just love statistics?

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Sony Computer Entertainment America has joined forces with ratings mogul Nielsen to develop a measurement system for the nascent in-game advertising industry, according to a joint release from the two companies on Monday.

Sony will now share its game network data from the PlayStation 3 console as well as the PlayStation Network (which encompasses its new virtual world, PlayStation Home). Nielsen will then combine this with its game usage data, which currently encompasses the activities of more than 12,000 U.S. households. Then, beginning this fall, Nielsen will begin tracking audience statistics and user activity through its GamePlay Metrics system, incorporating in-game advertising figures into the final product. Later this year, we'll see the first reports from this new project.

Nielsen, still best-known for its TV ratings, has been gradually expanding into newer forms of media. It's operated its NetRatings online metrics system for several years now, and first announced GamePlay Metrics last year. Earlier this summer, Nielsen expanded into tracking mobile media use.

In-game advertising is seen as a lucrative and untapped sector of the advertising industry; Microsoft and Google have both acquired in-game ad firms in the past two years, but it's nevertheless still getting off the ground. Sony and Nielsen's goal with the new in-game ad metrics is to help make it a more competitive field by providing some numbers for the oft-amorphous business.

Nielsen, an entity best known for its television ratings system, announced Wednesday that it will begin to track what you do with your cell phone.

In particular, the company will begin measuring how consumers use mobile Internet and mobile video beginning in July.

The service will be called Nielsen Wireless.

Included in the metrics will be comparisons of how subscribers of different wireless carriers watch TV or play video games, compared to the same use on their cell phone.

One tidbit the company has already released is that 55 percent of users of video-enabled mobile phones are from households with total incomes of $75,000 or greater.

Danish usability consultant Jakob Nielsen earned his unofficial title of "Web usability guru" as an early promoter of standardized Web design. You can thank him, in part, for blue links. He prompted a lasting, vocal debate by distinguishing between print and online approaches to eye appeal, readability and writing style. (For example, see "History of print standards.")

Jakob Nielsen

(Credit: useit.com)

Unafraid of controversy, he continues to tout astonishing concepts such as "Why you only need to test with five users" and is known for his strong--some would say "extreme"--opinions on minimalism and uniformity.

BBC News on Monday published an article detailing Nielsen's new call for a return to design guidelines in the Web 2.0 era. In it, not surprisingly, he urges designers to prioritize ease of use and effective search tools over glossy looks and pseudo-functional personalization gewgaws.

Typically, Nielsen says deeply intelligent things, but on that day he apparently stumbled--maybe a reporter was prodding him--and gave us this gem of insight on patterns of use in the teenage demographic: "It's because they are 20 years old that they act differently (from) 40-year-olds."

"The low bar for entry onto the Internet has always encouraged bad, or non-existent, web design. But he's definitely right that the dynamic elements of Web 2.0 can be counterproductive if overused or misused."
--Datamation

"Today, the dynamic web pages are not made in any rush hour; plenty of man hours go into research and a lot of effort is being put in by the group of experts to make the NEXT web 2.0 product / web site totally user-friendly... Experts from various streams like research analyst, hardcore technical guys, business development managers, investors, Artificial Intelligence experts, SEO specialists and many others are today extremely involved in making a successful web 2.0 product."
--Hitesh Mehta

"Usability is important, but with web 2.0 community-oriented sites in particular, I think Nielsen is clinging to set of rigid standards that aren't taking into account the changes in how users interact with the web. Of course, in an ideal world, users would get both--new features that adhered to sound usability principles, but while web 2.0 is many things, ideal it is not."
--Wired Compiler