Millennial Media has taken a great step and released a metrics report (which you can download here).  Besides providing good stats on the line of what AdMob also provides, they try to take it a set further by providing campaign metrics of effectiveness based on actions.  Chetan Sharma applauds Millennial for providing deeper stats on engagement such as time spent on site, what actions were performed etc.

I can personally attest to that the guys from Millennial Media are among the smartest on the block in the mobile marketing space. Also, their report is a great step to providing more insightufl metrics.  Where I do somewhat disagree is in their definition of “Engagement”.  According to them, engagment “is defined as a user interaction triggered by a campaign action”. In this they count clicks, click to call, and all sorts of other actions.  I think this is a definition that is too loose, at least in a social media marketing perspective.  Clicking on a banner or downloading a video implies curiousity, it does not imply interaction.  I would classify clicking and watching as “Action” rather than “Engagement”.  Click-to-call is definitely engagement as it implies a dialog has begun with the advertisers.

However, real engagement comes when users continue interacting with the brand after having clicked or completed the action.  This means signing up for a competition or involving friends in whatever the brand is proposing. This is of course thinking beyond mobile advertising and putting it into a social media context (where there is also a definite need for further definition of Engagement metrics).  But hats off to Millennial for taking a big leap in providing thought leadership.