The advertising industry may be interested in getting their ads on phones, but they also want to know that the ads are being seen by their target markets. That kind of personalized advertising is one of the biggest attractions of the mobile phone.

Mark Donovan, a vice president with the research company M:Metrics, says information about consumers' use of mobile Websites is vital to advertisers. That's why M:Metrics has developed technology to audit these websites, so advertisers can place their ads more appropriately.

M:Metrics recently used its audit capabilities in research it did with the mobile advertising company AdMob and the 2,000 sites it serves. A report on the research, released today, shows that about two-thirds of the people who view mobile ads are in the desirable 18- to 34-year-old age group, Donovan says.

The auditing process, which is done by surveying visitors to those WAP sites, also provides more granular information about those visitors, he says. That includes ethnicity and sex.

The study found that sites targeting African-Americans have an audience composition of more than 50% of that ethnic group, even though the group makes up just 6.3% of mobile users. Similar findings were discovered for sites aimed at females, Hispanics and other profiles, Donovan says.

Omar Hamoui, CEO of AdMob, said in a statement that audited information means advertisers can reach their target audience with greater accuracy.

"By working with M:Metrics and leveraging our vast network audience across the site, carrier and handset level, we now enable advertisers to target their buys in ways that they have come to expect with traditional Web advertising," Hamoui said. "Most importantly, they can reach their audience on the mobile Web with scale."

Donovan says the M:Metrics auditing technology will be offered to other mobile advertising companies and could be valuable to aggregators and even specific WAP sites.

Results of the AdMob audit: