Privacy Digest

Advertising: Nielsen Adds to Cellphone Tracking: CELLPHONES are rapidly becoming ubiquitous and the Nielsen Company, the longtime monitor of television consumption, wants in.

Nielsen said yesterday that it had agreed to acquire Telephia, a private company based in San Francisco, for an undisclosed amount. Since its founding in 1998, Telephia has become one of the most respected sources of data about cellphone use -- tracking consumers' phone calling, mobile Web surfing, video viewing and just about everything else. Nielsen has been building mobile tracking products on its own, but Telephia will greatly advance its ability to track media consumption on every screen, Nielsen executives said.

"We follow content wherever it goes across all platforms, and this is a really significant step forward in measuring content across mobile platforms," said Susan D. Whiting, executive vice president of Nielsen.

Cellphones are quickly becoming a top priority among media executives who think that consumers will soon watch more of their television, read more of their news and interact with magazines using their phones. Cellphone carriers are promoting their video content offerings, often in partnership with media companies, and this week Apple will introduce its long-anticipated iPhone, which will be focused as much on media consumption as it will be on phone calls.

"I'm sure it will have an effect on the consumer market because the designs that Apple introduces and the functionality always seems to be replicated by other consumer technology companies," said George Kliavkoff, the chief digital officer of NBC Universal.

Telephia's leading products provide research about market share in the telecommunications industry, performance quality in wireless networks and consumer satisfaction with phones. Telephia's consumer research is based on surveys of different people each time, in contrast to Nielsen's monitoring what the same people watch over time.

Telephia, however, holds patents on some techniques for media consumption tracking on the cellphone that are similar to Nielsen's approach in television, said Sid Gorham, president and chief executive of Telephia.

(Read Original Article - Via NYT > Technology.)