The Interactive Advertising Bureau and the Mobile Marketing Association have released “Mobile Web Advertising Measurement Guidelines” for public comment. Developed with the assistance of the Media Rating Council, the guidelines are to provide a framework to govern how ad impressions are counted on the mobile Web.

The guidelines include defining a mobile web ad impression, creating a common definition and methodology, and how to distinguishing between the established IAB Web ad impression and the mobile Web ad impression, and when each metric is appropriate.

Ultimately, the point is to encourage adoption of mobile ads - which in theory should not be difficult given the proliferation of mobile devices. However measuring mobile advertising is trickier than measuring Web ads, said Joe Laszlo, the IAB's director of research. (via ClickZ).

"The way that mobile networks handle data is different, and mobile device capabilities are different," he said. "They can't quite handle things like cookies the way PCs can, and mobile network operators play a much larger role in passing along data, which makes it harder to measure."

In general, the industry is trying to capture for advertisers just how widely mobile content is viewed. Earlier this year, ABC's interactive unit, ABCi, teamed with Verve Wireless to audit newspapers' mobile content delivered via the Verve publishing platform. As a result, ABCi is now able to provide newspaper publishers and advertisers with independently verified mobile usage data generated from apps, e-readers, and mobile browsers. Newspapers can now report on mobile audience by device type, mobile audience by day and day part, audience access points (app, mobile browser, e-reader), unique visitors, and page views.