White paper

Lost in the mobile maze

Why mobile complexity continues to challenge

the biggest and best in the industry
 Lost in the mobile maze

Lost in the mobile maze.....

Introduction 2

Understanding the market 2

Understanding mobile 3

1. Mobile phones 3

2. Browsers 4

3. Markup languages 4

4. Gateways, countries and MVNOs 4

5. Connection types 5

6. BlackBerry and other smartphones 5

7. Cookies 6

8. Operators and identification 6

9. Transcoders 6

10. Signal coverage, latency and data losses 6

11. URL length and redirects 7

12. Location 7

13. Applications and non-browser interaction 7

14. Media 8

15. Tracking codes and methods 8

Conclusion 9

About Bango 9

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 Lost in the mobile maze

Introduction For example:

The internet experience is passing through a period of
significant re-definition. Millions of users have
discovered the ability to browse from a continuously
available, personal and compact screen – the mobile
phone.
As a consequence, brands and content developers
are directing more resources to creating on-line
content suitable for mobile phone use, in turn, the
companies that provide technology to enable on-line
business are prioritizing investment in mobile
platforms, tools and devices.
Yet without going to any great expense it is easy to
show how the current mobile internet experience is all
too often shaky and unreliable. The mobile versions of
cornerstone internet technologies in commerce,
search, on-line advertising, tracking and analytics are
unsatisfactory, so that on-line businesses are
reluctant to depend on them.
Why is this?
With nearly 4 billion mobile phones, the size and
reach of the mobile market is vastly bigger than the
PC internet. To meet the huge variations across
business and consumer segments there are many
different types of mobile phone. Demand varies by
geography, budget, usage priorities, even by which
network you subscribe to.
With such complexity, solutions successfully crafted
for the PC internet do not translate easily into mobile
internet. As this paper shows, many of the companies
migrating their fixed internet services to mobile
haven’t got it right. Some don’t even realize they are
getting it wrong.
• Search results from a mobile phone deliver
web pages unsuitable for phone browsing and
fail to correctly index the corresponding
mobile internet pages (try any main search
provider)
• Payment from a phone requires users to enter
their network and phone number, or send text
messages. If the user isn’t identified by the
network, they often cannot pay at all (try
purchasing from the Nokia “Ovi” store).
• Analytics and CRM tools frequently fail on
mobile, seem unreliable or, worse, actually
break the mobile internet user experience (try
Google or Omniture analytics).
This paper sets out the challenges that need to be
understood to successfully develop mobile solutions.
There are a wide range of points that need to be
considered based on the variations in networks,
handsets and other factors. Overcoming these
challenges is essential and with Bango’s unique
technology, businesses are able to successfully
navigate their way through the complex mobile maze.
For more information about Bango see page 9.
Understanding the market
Mobile is the new internet and most of the world’s
leading brands are clamoring to jump in on the act.
But with so many of the industry leading brands
putting so much effort into mobile, it is a wonder that
so few are able to get some of the fundamentals right.
Take companies like Google or Adobe for example.
Google, the world’s leading internet company, is
spending a considerable amount of their budget and
marketing to build mobile applications like Google
Maps and a complete mobile operating system
(Android). Meanwhile, core business components like
search fail to deliver acceptable results for mobile

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 Lost in the mobile maze

consumers and even the latest mobile additions to
Google Analytics are nothing more than simple
patches that fail to deliver the accuracy required.
Similarly, Adobe is one of the leading suppliers of web
tools, from design solutions such as Dreamweaver to
web analytics from their recent Omniture acquisition.
They too are putting a lot of effort into mobile with
their latest Open Screen project aiming to bring Flash
10 to mobile. But just like Google they are late to the
game and are struggling to understand how mobile
works.
handsets. Without clear understanding for unique
visitors it is impossible to obtain other information that
can be relied on.
Bango mobile analytics takes many common mobile
complexities into consideration in order to deliver up
to eight time’s higher accuracy than traditional
analytics solutions.
1. Mobile phones
There are thousands of different phone models from
many manufacturers. Each has different capabilities,

Many companies assume that mobile is a smaller, browsers and settings that need to be understood in

less capable version of the PC web. But this order to track usage accurately.

assumption does not recognize the true importance of

mobile, the complexities it introduces or the massive
benefits it brings. Only mobile delivers a personal web
experience with always-on, 24/7 access that includes
an identity, location and direct payment mechanism
via the mobile phone bill. These benefits deliver
significant improvements to sales and marketing
campaigns not available via the traditional PC.

Understanding mobile

Tracking mobile marketing campaigns or visitors

navigating your website from their mobile phone is
much more complex than tracking traditional desktop
Each phone can come with a number of different
campaigns and sites. Without fully understanding how
firmware versions. Firmware often differs based on
mobile works it is easy to significantly reduce the
operator and country. Operators typically specify
accuracy of the information collected. However, with
variations in phone capabilities which can include
the right knowledge and partnerships, mobile analytics
different browsers and connection settings. For
has the ability to deliver higher levels of accuracy than
example, some operators will let phones connect to
the best traditional analytics solutions can achieve.
Wi-Fi in preference to using their own network.
The phone can also affect the browser and the ability
Far too many analytics solutions today simply add
to track visitors, within the session or across multiple
handset detection and basic operator IP address
sessions. This includes:
identification, but completely fail to address the real
• Memory to store cookies
complexities that mobile presents. The most
• Cache and cookie behavior. Some phones
significant shortfall is their inability to identify individual
reset cookies when the browser is shutdown
visitors, especially on most of the mass market
or the phone power is lost.

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 Lost in the mobile maze
Phone capabilities can vary considerably based on
operator settings, for example, some operators
prevent media from being saved locally to the handset
while the same phone with another operator permits it.
Some handsets like the Apple iPhone are closed
systems that only allow media and applications to be
purchased and installed through their own store.
2. Browsers
Browsers on today’s phones provide many more
standard web capabilities than the low specification
WAP browsers found on older handsets.
Full browsers such as Opera Mobile or the WebKit
browsers from Apple deliver desktop like experiences
but still may not provide reliable visitor identity due to
many other mobile factors.
Some phones, such as BlackBerry or Windows
Mobile, come installed with multiple browsers by
default. For example, Windows Mobile devices from
HTC come with both Pocket IE and Opera Mobile
browsers. There are also many third party browsers
which can be downloaded and run as an "app" on a
phone, users may have a preference to a certain
browser other than the default browser shipped on the
device. For example, Opera Mini or Mobile can be
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downloaded from the Opera website, Skyfire, Tea
Shark (based on Mozilla), Fennec (based on Firefox).
Browsers have different capabilities – from cookie and
JavaScript support to image and media capabilities
and browser capabilities may be customized per
handset by the operator or consumer. Even the most
modern mobile browsers may have security
restrictions in place that impact analytics – for
example the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch block
acceptance of third party cookies.
There are also a range of new, thin browsers that use
server engines to provide greater functionality and
performance. This includes Opera Mini, Opera Turbo
and Skyfire. The split architecture creates many
issues when trying to understand the device and
connection since the browser generally blocks key
handset and operator information from being passed
to the server. Generally a relationship with the
browser manufacturer is required to obtain all the
facts.
3. Markup languages
Most new devices support xHTML rather than WML or
other older formats, but there are still many legacy
handsets in the market that should not be ignored.
This impacts the methods by which information can be
gathered. So a full understanding of different markup
languages is required for the best accuracy.
4. Gateways, countries and MVNOs
An operator gateway acts as a proxy to all data and
will be the IP address reported for the connection.
This means that all customers connecting through a
given gateway will report back the same IP address,
making it of little use for visitor identification. It does
provide some valuable information about the operator
and country though, providing you know how to use it.
 Lost in the mobile maze
Operators have lots of gateway servers and the list
frequently changes. They may be shared between
MNOs under license, which can be across country
borders also.
MVNO’s use the same gateways provided by the
primary MNO network and from a marketing
perspective the MNO and MVNO have very different
customer demographics.
In addition an operator may “round robin” the
consumer’s connection between their gateways. This
means that during a live internet session the gateway
will be changed, resulting in a totally different IP
address being reported for that visitor. Swapping of
gateway is a good way to balance load and ensure a
good service, making it a common practice among
operators. It does mean that traditional methods of
user identity such as IP address and User Agent as
defined by JICWEBS cannot be relied on for
accuracy.
5. Connection type
WAP gateway
These are still heavily used and tend to assume the
browser is limited. They may prevent cookies reaching
the handset or deploy transcoding solutions more
actively.
Internet gateways
These are newer and tend to handle full browsing and
cookies etc. correctly. Unfortunately, few provide any
form of identity.
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Wi-Fi
Many feature phones and smartphones now include
Wi-Fi and handsets may automatically select a Wi-Fi
connection to browse the web. This behavior is
dependent on the default settings for the phone, which
may be defined by the handset manufacturer or the
operator.
All handsets are capable of switching connection such
that other considerations may apply – for example,
Wi-Fi will allow cookies via a direct connection
(assuming the handset accepts them) but switching to
a WAP gateway may result in cookies not being
passed or redirection through a Transcoder.
Some Wi-Fi services are provided by the operator,
others may be private, public or corporate.
6. BlackBerry and other smartphones
BlackBerry smartphones are one of the main mobile
browsing platforms, there are three times more people
browsing from a BlackBerry than an iPhone (see
http://bango.com/blackberrywp). BlackBerry is the
third most popular smartphone in the USA and 5th
worldwide. BlackBerry handsets connect via a server
hosted by Research in Motion (RIM) – the
manufacturer. This connection blocks all operator
information and identity. In addition BlackBerry
handsets can have separate browsers and RIM have
just acquired another browser manufacturer.
Other smartphones have similar issues of multiple
browsers and non-standard connections. For
example, some of the latest Windows Mobile
handsets use the Opera browser which has recently
started to deploy the Opera Turbo technology. This
moves some of the browsing engine to a server in
Norway, which poses problems identifying visitors and
their location.
 Lost in the mobile maze

7. Cookies

While most modern mobile browsers support cookies

there are still complexities to consider that prevent
cookies from being as reliable as they are on a PC.
Firstly, some handsets still fail to persistently store
cookies between sessions or clear cookies when the
browser exits or the phone loses power. This still
applies to many of the mainstream handsets on the
market.

But it’s not just old phones that fail to support cookies
correctly, even some of the very latest devices do not
support third party cookies by default, this includes the
Some operators may provide MNO identification, but
Apple iPhone and iPod Touch.
usually under partnership. It allows clear separation of
the MNO from their MVNOs and deals with situations
Operators may intercept cookies and store them on
where gateways are shared.
the gateway servers because they fear the handset is
not up to the job. This behavior can differ between
9. Transcoders
gateways causing multiple identities to occur. The use
of transcoders can also affect the reliability of cookies. These are commonly used by many operators to
“improve” the layout of traditional websites for use on

8. Operators and identification mobile phones.

An operator can have a significant impact on the

accuracy of mobile information. Everything from how
the phone and browser work by default to the
connection type and the use of transcoders. They also
play a key part in the provision of any enhanced form
of identification.
The phone never provides open identity in the web
session. Any mobile identity available comes from the
operator. This ID is sometimes provided in the open, if
you know where to look. However, operators more
frequently supply a visitor ID as part of a specific
commercial agreement.
There are many different forms of operator supplied
ID – from phone number (MSISDN) through various
sub numbers and mobile identification numbers
(MINs).
Transcoders often remove content, change headers,
block cookies, strip out operator information and
change the site content, including tracking code.
10. Signal coverage, latency and data
losses
Packet loss within a web data session can be a
problem as users may be recorded at one point but
never arrive at the expected destination. For example,
a user clicks a banner ad but the connection is lost
before they reach the landing page. In that case the
impression and click could be recorded by the ad
network but user hitting the landing page and any
resulting conversion would not. If the user re-clicks the
ad, there is a good chance the click will be recorded
again. The key to solving this is through the use of a
reliable user ID. It allows this sort of behavior to be

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 Lost in the mobile maze

tracked as multiple clicks with one page view of the 13. Applications and non-browser
landing page.
interaction

It is possible to track events from within mobile

11. URL length and redirects
Devices, browsers and networks may impose URL
length limitations which impact the passing of
analytics campaign parameters and other information
passed on the query string. This may be as low as
255 characters, although it is often higher these days.
applications. The one item of complexity is how to link
consumer identity between web and app
environments. For example, how does an agency
track consumers clicking on a banner ad, downloading
from the app store and then launching and using the
application?

URL redirection needs to be controlled on mobile as

many operators will prevent more than a few redirects
occurring. This can impact some tracking methods if
not understood.

12. Location

Network
Location is known in the network by the operator,
although no operators currently provide location by
default within the browsing session. Typically location
is available under commercial terms from the operator
or their chosen third parties.

Phone
Location is known on the handset via GPS or cell Applications may have access to EMEID or other
triangulation, as used by Google Maps. Some phones data, but web browsers do not. Likewise, cookies
can be asked for their GPS location within the web stored in either instance are not shared.
session through an API – Google Android for
example. All handset based location methods ask the The ability to track an application typically depends on
consumer for permission. the vendor, the security settings on the phone and
user permission to connect and send third party data
Wi-Fi and publicly accessible networks across the internet. Application tracking is no good if
Location can be determined from Reverse DNS the data cannot be sent and received by the tracker.
Lookup and IP Location tables. This method is
common on desktop websites and provides an
estimate for location, but there is good chance that the
observed IP address may not match the physical
location.

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 Lost in the mobile maze
14. Media
Tracking videos and other media playback is harder
on mobile. There are a wide range of custom media
playback solutions pre-installed on phones that rarely
contain any ways to track startup or progress of
playback. Common desktop methods using Flash are
simply not possible on mobile and mobile browsers
rarely provide the ability to embed or install other third
party media solutions containing tracking capabilities.
If they did the media player would need to be written
to support a massive list of handsets, firmware,
operating systems. It would also need to be aware of
all the operator variations and settings.
15. Tracking code and methods
There are many methods available to track and collect
information about visitors to websites and people
interacting with marketing campaigns. Each method
has different advantages and complexities but in all
cases the key is not in the recording but in the identity
of each unique visitor.
JavaScript
Full JavaScript support is only found on a very limited
set of modern, high-end mobile phones. So depending
on JavaScript alone to record mobile interactions will
result in very poor results.
The general use of JavaScript will corrupt the display
and usability of a site on the majority of phones. It
should only be used with care on the latest handsets.
But determining which devices support JavaScript to a
sufficient level is a challenge in itself.
See http://www.brysonmeunier.com/mobile-analytics-
with-google-analytics/ for more details of mobile tests
with Google Analytics. Even the latest version of
Google Analytics requires that handset capabilities
are determined ahead of the correct tracking method
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being used. But more importantly, the accuracy of
visitor identification is still in question.
Image tags
Using simple image tags on pages to record visitor
navigation and campaign interactions provides a more
robust method of mobile data collection. However,
there are a number of considerations.
Image caching is an issue, both on the device and on
the operator gateways – analytics systems may only
ever see one request as subsequent images are
served from the cache or proxy server. This can also
affect figures when comparing pages served versus
page views - because a server logs a request, there
can be no guarantee the page was either served
correctly, or even received by the end user.
This is often a reason why web logs and analytics
figures can vary.
URL length restrictions mentioned earlier can also be
an issue as campaign details, referrer information and
query string information needs to be passed through
the image call for recording.
URL redirection
URL redirection accurately records click events by
bouncing the user off an analytics server on way to
the landing / destination page. The URL length,
allowing for parameters, along with the total number of
redirects permitted both need to be considered.
Tracking implementation
Incorrect implementation of tracking code on mobile
can easily introduce accuracy issues, more so than
with desktop sites and campaigns. Mobile analytics
needs to consider postbacks, user refreshes and
connection losses to remove erroneous page views
and clicks.
 Lost in the mobile maze

Conclusion

Despite traditional internet companies struggling with

the complexities of mobile, these challenges can
easily be overcome. With Bango’s unique technology,
businesses are able to successfully navigate their way
through the complex mobile maze. Find out more at
www.bango.com

About Bango

Bango is the leading provider of payment and

analytics products for businesses targeting the fast
growing market of internet enabled mobile phones.

Bango Analytics provides mobile marketers and

website owners the most accurate information about
consumers interacting with their campaigns and
visiting their site from their mobile phones. For more
information about Bango Analytics solutions visit:
http://bango.com/analytics

Bango’s unique technology and relationships with

mobile operators, handset manufacturers and
consumers enable significantly higher payment
conversion rates for the world’s leading mobile
content businesses. For more information about
Bango Payment solutions visit:
http://bango.com/payment

As more people access the internet from their mobile

phones, Bango’s innovative products are an essential
part of every business’s web strategy.