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WPP Joins Backers for Mobile Metrics Firm
WPP's Kantar Group has joined two venture capital companies, Prism Venture Partners and founding investor i-Hatch Ventures in a $7m Series B round of funding for mobile media measurement firm M:Metrics.
The proceeds of the financing round will be directed towards international expansion and new services. M:Metrics was founded in September 2004 by Will Hodgman, President and CEO and Seamus McAteer, Chief Product Architect and Senior Analyst. Hodgman's first venture was AdRelevance, now part of Nielsen//NetRatings, from which Barbara Jarzab, Chief of Measurement Sciences, joined M:Metrics.
According to Jeff Krentz, Executive VP, Corporate Development and Strategy for Kantar: 'The mobile phone is fast becoming a channel for mass media. M:Metrics is the standard that content providers use to measure the attitudes and behavior of mobile phone users. This data provides the measures that are critical for the mobile medium to be fully embraced by advertisers, by employing transparent and accepted methodologies to accurately quantify the audience for mobile content'.
Chip Austin, General Partner at i-Hatch Ventures, says that just over a year ago the mobile industry still presented 'fundamental challenges in accurately quantifying even the most basic market dynamics that are readily available in other media', but that M:Metrics' founding team has 'defined the mobile measurement industry' and built 'an amazing business in the process'.
M:Metrics, a private corporation headquartered in Seattle, makes data available to clients via the interactive MobiLens online interface. This provides access to a range of competitive intelligence, and allows for flexible custom queries of subscriber consumption and device-level data. The new Channel Viewer product allows clients to assess the performance of partners, competitors and categories of content across the entire market for mobile content and applications. Launched only in March this year, the company already boasts 38 clients including Verizon Wireless, Warner Music Group, MTV, Yahoo! and Openwave.
Web sites are at www.i-Hatch.com , www.prismventure.com , www.kantargroup.com and www.mmetrics.com.
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