Alternative mobile advertising opportunities: Relevancy and fun
By Laura Marriott, President, Mobile Marketing Association
Story posted: September 18, 2007 - 5:59 am EDT

Editor’s Note: Welcome to Reality Check, a feature for RCR Wireless News’ new weekly e-mail service, Mobile Content and Culture. We’ve gathered a group of visionaries and veterans in the mobile content industry to give their insights into the marketplace. In the coming weeks look for columns from Tom Huseby of SeaPoint Ventures, Mark Desautels of CTIA, Mark Donovan of M:Metrics, and more.

When the MMA first started publicly speaking about mobile advertising more than two years ago, some of the backlash I immediately received from consumers was extreme: “I don’t want that on MY device, my highly personal device, my mobile phone.” Today, two years later, reactions are still mixed. At times, consumers are upset that an advertiser can be allowed to interrupt them whenever and wherever they are. But mobile is a channel of engagement. The mobile channel allows consumers to engage the brand and elect to engage in mobile advertising, or not.

Today, a lot of the excitement in mobile advertising has been around the mobile Web. Even within the MMA, we have focused our format, guidelines and best practice work around defining the guidelines for mobile Web advertising. Let’s face it: Consumers love image-rich experiences! The colors, the graphics and the overall experience are stimulating! But there are lots of alternative mobile advertising models that are emerging, and this column will focus on a few of them.

A couple of months ago I spoke to a company that was launching a service that offered mobile advertising on ringback tones )or answer tones as some operators call them). Awesome idea and why not?! It really started me thinking about the other opportunities, beyond mobile Web, for mobile advertising—and there are lots of them. This column will focus on only three but there are lots more.

--Advertising opportunity No. 1: Text messaging

In mobile, text messaging is still the sweet spot for reaching consumers due to its ubiquity, price point and ease of use. Text messaging is pervasive and everywhere! And companies are beginning to exploit the text channel for mobile advertising. The CEO of 4INFO, Zaw Thet, tells me that “most people have overlooked text as an advertising medium.” Text allows companies to reach their consumer in an uncluttered manner, and deliver pure branding with measurable results.

But what does this mean exactly?

The 4INFO advertising experience means that consumers will receive advertisements on the back end of the company’s text service. For example, if you subscribe to the 4INFO Sports channel, when you receive your sports alert you may also receive an ad from Chevy or Citibank or 1-800-FLOWERS that includes an offer to participate in their services. Thus, if I am a marketer, I can buy advertising on a particular channel on the 4INFO network which will not only allow me to target based on that specific demographic, it will also allow me to report back on the success in terms of clicks, conversion, location, age, gender, etc. Text can deliver a targeted advertising experience. In text, 4INFO also knows who their consumer is, every step of the way, which allows them to also do frequency distribution on ads.

What types of advertisers are using the text-based advertising approach? Credit-card companies, travel agents, florists, automotive manufacturers—the brands that want to be in front of the consumer all of the time. So, given the opportunity, what are Thet and his team’s biggest challenge? “To raise the awareness that text is a viable form of advertising,” he said. However, it sounds like publishers are already waking up to this fact.

--Advertising opportunity No. 2: Social media

I spoke to Bob Morgan, VP and GM in North America for ShoZu, a mobile social media service that enables the experience between mobile consumers and their favorite online destinations )e.g., Flickr, Facebook, YouTube, Blogger and so on).

According to Morgan, “couple content of value, like social networking photos, videos and commentary, with targeted, relevant advertising and it changes the game.”

I really enjoy the ShoZu service: Take a photo and immediately upload it to your favorite sites or even a digital picture frame )in fact, we are even talking about getting one within the MMA to fully leverage this service). Or users can download personalized content feeds from those sites.

Now add advertising: ShoZu’s platform is able to deliver targeted ads in a variety of formats and calls to action. For example, Linkin Park is using ShoZu this summer to promote their latest album and tour with behind-the-scenes footage linking to their fan site. Rich media associated with the consumer interaction is key.

--Advertising opportunity No. 3: Voice

I was recently introduced to SayNow, which has a service that allows celebrities to pass out a unique, exclusive phone number to promote interaction. Yes, real celebrities interacting with Joe Consumer through their mobile device. Fans can send voicemails and receive responses back from the celebrity; or the celebrity can call and leave exclusive information about upcoming shows or releases or their news. The most compelling feature is that the service can broker a conversation between the celebrity and the fan.

The advertising opportunity? Text-message followups, voice-based advertisements before or after the message from the celebrity, the opportunities are endless. The goal is to facilitate action or click-based ads through the voice channel. For example, imagine that after you hear your favorite rapper, you are then able to connect to TicketMaster to immediately buy tickets, CDs or concert shirts for an upcoming show. The experience becomes HIGHLY RELEVANT for the consumer.

Nikhyl Singhal, CEO of SayNow, says, “The consumer is only delivered relevant offers to their experience.” Remember they have access to an exclusive number to reach their celebrity and hear exclusive messages. Fun!

Hopefully I’ve provided a flavor of some of the other mobile advertising opportunities available, but this is only a start. Let’s not forget about Bluetooth and location services and MMS and loading-page ads and, well, the list is almost endless.

We must work together to build a sustainable channel, but let’s not forget about the consumer. 4INFO’s Thet tells me “our first and primary focus is on the consumer and putting the consumer experience first. Consumers are not opting in to have ads pushed to them.” Let’s collectively keep that in mind.

You may contact Laura directly at [email protected]. You may contact RCR Wireless News at [email protected].
 

The wild, wild west is on its way out
By Laura Marriott, President, Mobile Marketing Association
Story posted: August 21, 2007 - 5:59 am EDT

Editor’s Note: Welcome to Reality Check, a feature for RCR Wireless News’ new weekly e-mail service, Mobile Content and Culture. We’ve gathered a group of visionaries and veterans in the mobile content industry to give their insights into the marketplace. In the coming weeks look for columns from Tom Huseby of SeaPoint Ventures, Mark Desautels of CTIA, Mark Donovan of M:Metrics, and more.

When you hear the term “wild west,” the images that are normally conjured might be of John Wayne or Clint Eastwood riding horseback across the frontier, or at least the Hollywood frontier. In our mobile marketing and media industry, the wild west refers to the conditions that existed at the very beginning of the launch of premium text messaging services: The early days, in 2003, when we first launched cross-carrier text messaging services in the United States. At the time, it was the new frontier!

When cross-carrier text messaging campaigns began in late 2003, there were no published, industry-wide rules or guidelines for how these services would be offered to the consumer. Companies from the United States and abroad were launching campaigns to consumers in a rapid-fire fashion. It was a land grab for consumer interaction, market share and revenue.

There wasn’t consistency in the user experience—no STOP command, no opt-in or opt-out guidelines, no rules around subscription services, etc. There was no transparency or disclosures around the types of campaigns the consumers were signing up to participate in. In fact, consumers were not sure, in the days of the wild west, what they were signing up for, and they certainly didn’t know how to cancel their subscription.

But this is a success story, a story where the cowboy rides off into the sunset having secured his/her victory. Jay Emmet, president of mBlox and vice-chairman of the MMA’s board, says the early days were about delivering programs in rapid-fire succession to the consumer.

While it was early days in the United States, the market in Europe was much more developed, and companies with expertise offering premium text campaigns in the European region were beginning to come to the United States to offer their services. These European entrants helped to develop the industry in the United States and offer consumers a broader catalogue—while also helping the industry come to terms with the need for guidelines and best practices. By 2004, we had seen a significant spike in A2P (Application to Person) text messaging traffic. A SIGNIFICANT spike in traffic!

Then along came the cowboy in the white hat: The Mobile Marketing Association and CTIA collaborated with their members, in late 2004, to develop and subsequently launch the first Consumer Best Practices for Cross-Carrier Mobile Content Services (affectionately referred to by those in the industry as CBP). The wireless carrier leaders in these early days were AT&T, Cingular Wireless, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless. The first version of the CBP guidelines was launched in late Spring 2005.

Since then, the guidelines have expanded to include chat, subscriptions, advertising and promotion, marketing to children—the list goes on and on. More recently, we also developed rules around recycled numbers to help drive a healthy, sustainable ecosystem. Recycled numbers have been addressed to ensure consumers, particularly in tight markets, won’t be subscribed to services set up by the previous owners of their phone numbers.

Indeed, the west has been discovered and developed. The forts and foundations are strong.

And today, in 2007, this is an even bigger industry! According to Steve Largent, president and CEO of CTIA, “Last year, 158 billion text messages were sent in the U.S. alone, which is up 95% from 2006. This translates into approximately 300,000 text messages per minute. Moreover, 94% of all text messages are opened and read.”

“The development of the market took collaboration across the ecosystem,” says Chris Black, director of mobile marketing and interactive media for AT&T Mobility and co-chairman for the MMA Consumer Best Practices Committee (the committee that drives the creation of the CBP guidelines for cross-carrier mobile content services). AT&T Mobility has been one of the companies leading in the development of a healthy mobile marketing industry.

The industry has recently collaborated again to drive the creation of the monitoring and auditing function, validated against MMA Consumer Best Practices, which is led by CTIA. The program monitors each and every operational short-code campaign to ensure compliance to the Consumer Best Practices. Thus far, the results have been positive. Programs that are not in compliance are given a warning period to comply, at which time they must be corrected or risk being shut down. In addition to the industry-monitoring function, each carrier also maintains their own separate monitoring facilities and services for independent audits, and to address specific consumer areas of concern.

Dave Oberholzer, associate director of Verizon Wireless and former co-chair of the MMA Consumer Best Practices Committee, agrees that we have invested a significant amount in the infrastructure to help develop a sustainable industry in the United States. He tells me that for long-term growth and development, the economics may need to change. Does this mean penalties for violators? Or incentives for those companies that are adhering to the rules? Perhaps the impact of adhering or the consequences of breaking the rules could possibly include credits for superior service, penalties for violating guidelines, etc.

Jim Manis, chairman for the Mobile Marketing Association from 2003 to 2005 and now president and CEO of 1024 Wireless Services, tells me that, “We did our job with CBP and now there is a bigger job to do. As an industry, we need to create new opportunities for content providers and more incentives for them to invest, market and innovate.” What does this mean? It means we have laid a firm foundation, the wild west has been discovered and we are on the verge of a new frontier… A frontier that will start again with financial health and innovation.

According to Louis Gump, who is from The Weather Channel Interactive and was MMA global chairman in 2006 (and who is still a current MMA board member), the frontier is moving. Not only do we have significant opportunities for text messaging, but we are moving toward more image-rich experiences, and we have learned how to domesticate along the way.

Kudos to the pioneers of our mobile marketing industry in the United States and abroad. It was your collective dedication to a positive and consistent user experience that helped move us quickly to where we are today: a billion-dollar-plus mobile marketing industry in the United States alone. Let’s all work together to take it to the next frontier. “It is all about consistency of user experience,” says Emmet.

You may contact Laura directly at . You may contact RCR Wireless News at .[email protected][email protected]

How Does Your Mobile Meausure? A Few Wireless Whims on Overcoming Mobile Marketing Hype
Written on October 31st, 2006, published on www.adotas.com
By Brian Hecht
Used with permission from ADOTAS, Copyright 2007.  All rights reserved.
Submitted to MMA by Kikucall

Just recently, the population of the <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />United States surpassed 300 million people. But there’s a number that’s rising even faster than the U.S. population: it’s the number of mobile phone subscribers. According to CTIA, the trade association for the mobile industry, that number has just topped 225 million. That’s 75 percent of the entire US population, not just adults.

We marketers are having an ever-harder time reaching a broad audience, as consumers are TiVo-ing and YouTubing themselves into smaller and smaller slivers. Those mobile numbers are certainly tempting: there aren’t too many other media that can reach three out of four Americans. Is the mobile phone — the most personal of all communication devices — actually the next mass medium? What do those stellar subscriber numbers really mean for marketers?

First, we need to understand what people are actually doing with their cellphones. After all, just because a person owns a cellphone does not mean that she is willing or able to receive your marketing message. At its core, a cellphone is simply another voice connection, and we are all aware of the limits of voice-based telemarketing in the age of Do Not Call. So what else are all those cellphones good for?

By a large margin, the number-one use of cellphones, aside from talk, is text messaging. The mobile research company M:Metrics estimates that 38% of mobile subscribers send a text message each month. That’s 73 million Americans who are text messaging. And the text messages are adding up: CTIA estimates that Americans sent and received 12.5 billion text messages in the month of June. Granted, we’re mashing together data from two different sources here, but both sources are generally reliable. And unless we’re completely off, that comes out to more than 170 text messages per subscriber per month. That’s almost six texts a day for every texter. Maybe one of those texts should be coming from you.

And what about all those other neat things you can do with your cellphone, like taking and sending photographs, watching video, and surfing the mobile web? Well, the numbers there aren’t quite as encouraging. Although there’s certainly growth, none of those activities approaches text messaging in popularity. After texting, the next most popular data application is photo messaging, but only 14.5% of subscribers do that in a given month. That’s 28 million photo messagers, compared with 73 million texters. And after that the numbers take a nosedive. Only 22 million have browsed news and information, 20 million purchased a ringtone, and a mere 6 million downloaded a mobile game.

Of course, “only” is a relative term. Mobile gamers are probably quite enthusiastic, and maybe they are particularly receptive to in-game marketing. All of these applications are experiencing rapid growth, and it’s early days yet in the mobile revolution. There’s no telling which application will break out to big numbers in the months ahead. But when you consider that mobile gaming is one of the most hyped corners of the mobile marketplace, the actual penetration numbers simply don’t live up to the hype. Not yet, at least.

What all these numbers suggest is that for marketers looking to make an immediate mass impact with mobile, text messaging is where it’s at. It is the most viable mobile medium for marketers looking to reach anything that could be described as a mass market.

Even with text messaging’s impressive penetration number, you are only able to send a text message to a consumer who has specifically requested such communication. So how do you go about transforming those hypothetical usage numbers to power your own mobile marketing efforts? Here are five specific ideas for actions that make sense to consider right now:

1. Grab Your Own Short Code: Short codes — those five- and six—digit numbers that enable consumers to easily send a text message — are becoming ubiquitous. Having a short code is the key to letting consumers send a text message to you. And that’s the best way to get consumers to opt in engage with your brand via mobile. You can even get a “vanity code” that spells out a word that’s meaningful to your brand, so it’s easy for consumers to remember.

It’s comparable to reserving a URL for your brand’s Website. It’s not quite as easy or cheap, though: It will cost a few thousand dollars to start plus some ongoing monthly fees, and you’ll need to work through a mobile agency or aggregator. Still, the cost of entry is far smaller than, say, building a great Website or buying airtime, and it is undoubtedly worth the investment. In fact, it is the one fundamental action that you simply must take now if you want to engage in any sort of text-message marketing.

2. Start Collecting Numbers on your Website: If you’re like most marketers, you’re already collecting valuable opt-ins and user information on your Website. It’s simple to add a mobile phone field to your form. Even if you’re not quite sure what you’re going to do with these numbers yet, you’ll have a start in with a built-in audience for your mobile efforts.

3. Draft and Publicize Your Mobile Privacy Policy: Consumers are justifiably squeamish about giving out the mobile phone number. It’s an incredibly personal channel. As you begin collecting mobile numbers or advertising your short code, you simply must have a clear, unequivocal privacy policy available to consumers. If you can give your consumers a clear reason to opt-in, coupled with a rock solid privacy assurance, they’ll be far more likely to participate.

4. Watch the Marketplace: There’s enough mobile marketing going on right now that it’s likely another company in your competitive set is already testing mobile. Watch what they’re doing. Just because another company is doing something doesn’t mean it’s working, but it’s likely that some thought has gone into it. Of course, do not plagiarize anyone else’s marketing plan. But you can use this data to brainstorm your own ideas and pivot off of trends in the marketplace.

5. Start Talking About Mobile Internally: When our agency works with clients, the number-one barrier to getting started is a lack of internal consensus about the value of mobile. Even if your company is not quite ready to take the plunge, it is essential that someone take a leadership position and become the internal expert on mobile. Perhaps that person is you. The marketplace data in favor of text message marketing is compelling, and now is the perfect time to start the conversation.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

The Four Pillars of Successful <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Mobile Marketing<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

Chapter excerpt from Mobile Persuasion: Perspectives on the Future of Influence

Published by Stanford University's Mobile Persuasion Lab, April 2007
by Eric Holmen, President, SmartReply, Inc.

Mobile marketing has potential to make the mobile phone experience miserable. Because mobile communications are highly personal, they differ from other advertising-enriched technologies, including radio, TV and web. Mobile advertisers have little understanding of the recipient’s environment when messages are delivered. With TV or Internet advertising, marketers can be fairly certain of conditions and engagement with content. That is not the case with mobile ads, though done well, mobile marketing offers great value to advertisers and recipients.

Here’s one example of a win-win solution in mobile marketing. During the summer of 2006, gas prices had risen to record levels by as much as 80% in some parts of the US. Consumers were very unhappy. The trend also presented a problem for our client Meijer Supercenters, which operates gas stations within parking lots of its superstores.

To keep customers happy, Meijer launched an innovative mobile messaging alert system. Prior to a price increase, Meijer would alert interested customers via text, allowing them 4 to 6 hours to fill up before prices were updated. A simple yet valuable alignment of content and context.

Customers felt in control. Meijer provided a service and saved them money. And the retailer benefited too; as customers topped off tanks, they also grabbed fixings for dinner or a new sweatshirt. Value, it appears, is contagious from the parking lot to the store shelves.

To most, mobile messaging seems simple - each message has 160 characters. How complicated is that? Very complicated, we learned. Mobile (or any marketing) in and of itself does not drive business transactions. Relationships do. Successful and engaging relationships will lead to a greater number of transactions over time. So the complexity lies in the relationship with the consumer, not the medium.

To navigate the complexity of creating successful mobile marketing campaigns, we summarized what we call our “four pillars” of a mobile marketing vision:

1. Consumer preference is a sovereign right.  Consumers are protective of their phones and rightly so. They must be able to engage and disengage at will, by any means. Advertisers who do not honor consumer preferences will get banished.

2. Great marketing is a service.  Mobile marketing can provide valuable services to customers, e.g., an SMS alerting price increases or discounts, or an MMS (multimedia message) to help complete tasks, like cooking a meal from products purchased at the marketer’s store.  These services can inspire customer loyalty.

3. Personalization is critical.   Customers may respond to a mobile marketing campaign one time, out of novelty.  To achieve consistent results, however, requires personalizing the message - leading to increased customer transactions.

4. Relationships drive transactions.  In contrast to marketing via other media, mobile campaigns may not generate immediate transaction spikes. Rather, developing engaging relationships with customers leads to a greater number of transactions over time.  

This last statement may seem obvious today, but has not always been to traditional marketers accustomed to immediate spikes in business that followed TV and newsprint campaigns. Today, the growth of interactive marketing—especially the mobile platform—highlights how much success depends on developing relationships between brands and customers. So how do you develop this relationship?

1) Brands need to provide their customers with valuable services;

2) Personalized for each customer;  

3) Delivered in a way that respects customer wishes.

Almost daily someone asks: “How urgently should I launch a mobile initiative?” At SmartReply, we answer: If your competitor succeeds in engaging your customer before you, then your job becomes much harder, if not impossible.

Speed is not the only issue. In the near term, quick-and-dirty mobile campaigns will work. Because mobile ads are still novel in the US, people respond to them. But only once. The ongoing prospects for this approach are not good, appealing only to discount shoppers who have no loyalty to brands.

To that end, we encourage companies to understand which customer types create real value. Discount-driven customers are not profitable in the long run, whereas customers with brand loyalty generate 70% of the margin. Note - valuable customers only welcome mobile messages that are relationship-driven.  Other communications to their mobiles get blacklisted.

Advertising is about the sizzle, not the steak. As companies plan a mobile marketing strategy, they would be wise to avoid the pitfalls of advertising sizzle. While TV and radio excel in delivering an enticing brand promise, the mobile platform is uniquely positioned to transform the brand promise into a concrete reality.

About SmartReply

The only voice and mobile messaging company dedicated to meet the challenges and objectives of the retailing industry, SmartReply's mobile solutions have created breakthrough results for over 80 leading retailers throughout the US and Canada. Information can be found at www.SmartReply.com or by calling (800)-785-6769.

Carriers or Content: Who Will Take the Lead with <?XML:NAMESPACE PREFIX = ST1 />ODP?
Scott G. Silk
President and CEO
Action Engine

What’s in a name? Over $1.5 billion, if the name is “on-device portal” (ODP). That’s what ARCchart estimates as the total ODP market size for media companies and mobile operators in 2009. Similarly, ARCchart projects the market’s growth rate at 166% compounded annually, and this doesn’t even include the multi-billion dollar revenue stream that mobile advertising is predicted to add in addition to the ODP space.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

Of course, there’s more driving this market than the potential for exponential revenue growth. High-speed networks now provide dependable connectivity. A new generation of powerful, reliable handsets can deliver a vast array of rich content. In addition, today’s ODP solutions make it simple for users to access that content and easy for media companies and operators to manage and monetize that content.

Operators Play It Safe.
Given their relationships with subscribers, mobile operators, like Verizon Wireless and AT&T Wireless, should be leading the ODP charge, right? Wrong. At Action Engine, we see ODP being driven first by big-brand media and content companies, like ESPN, Apple, Yahoo!, and MSNBC.com, that want to elevate their brands across millions of handsets and monetize their content via mobile advertising.

Today, mobile operators are taking a conservative approach when it comes to deploying ODPs. They have a strong installed base of subscribers that they want to protect, and this means that they will wait to embrace ODP technology until it is fully certified in their labs and accepted in the market. ODP presents an opportunity for them, but they will take a ‘pragmatic’ approach before investing heavily in this emerging growth opportunity.

Media Companies Lead the Charge.
Conversely, media and content companies are aggressively pursuing their on-device portal strategies. They are anxious to put their brands and content on millions of phones to start reaping the mobile advertising revenues and brand awareness rewards that come with this new ODP technology.

Some media companies are also taking a direct-to-consumer approach to get to market fast. Others are choosing to work together with the operators to leverage the marketing and distribution power that those partnerships can offer. Either way, nearly all of the big brands have RFPs out on the street to find new ways to elevate their brand and leverage the usability, monetization, and manageability benefits that ODPs can provide.

Better late than never?  Only time will tell how the ODP market unfolds. My take? Media and content companies are going to continue to take the lead in driving the ODP market in 2007, and mobile operators will join them when the ‘risk’ of losing the market is greater than the ‘risk’ of not acting aggressively. At that critical juncture, the mobile operators will jump in with both feet. Stay tuned…..

The <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Mobile Channel: pinpoint targeting, minimal waste, maximum ROI

Robert Thurner
Commercial Director
Incentivated

Despite their very best efforts, my wife and two daughters are yet to convince me that the family needs a dog.  Until they do, adverts for dog food will be wasted on me. However, for dog owners who care passionately about the health and diet of their four legged friends,’ dog food adverts are much more relevant.

With dog owners spending millions of pounds per year on dog food, competition to build customer loyalty is fierce. It is therefore not surprising that dog food brands are turning their attention away from poorly targeted campaigns (which waste precious marketing budgets and result in disappointing ROI) in favour of more personal interaction with their customers.

However, it is not just dog food brands who are making the change. Whether you’re selling dog food, dishwashers or holidays, the challenge remains the same – to develop highly targeted, one-to-one relationships with customers in order to improve customer acquisition and long term retention. Increasingly, it is the mobile channel which is being seen as the catalyst to this change.

For marketers, mobile offers brands the ability to put the consumer at the heart of the communications process. Unlike PCs (which tend to be used by multiple users) mobile phones are much more personal devices. They are the nearest thing to a direct connection into the consumer’s mind anyone is likely to attain in the near future and this makes them a powerful channel to deliver highly targeted and relevant information.

Given their nature, mobiles are also portable and thanks to GPS we can now capitalise on this to track their location and send location-specific information.  Mobile phones are ubiquitous and are with us 24/7, at home, at work and when we are on the move making them an instant, real-time response channel for any other media channel. In addition, new technology means results can be accurately measured and tracked back to specific campaigns in specific media, for example, real time reporting on SMS responses requesting brochures, content delivery, click through to mobile internet sites and detailed analytics of pages browsed.

Given its strengths, it is little surprise that the mobile channel is now seen as the glue which unites other elements of the campaign mix: above the line advertising, sponsorship, DM, PR and sales promotion.  It is the ultimate “me, here and now” medium. However, if you thought mobile was just about text messaging, think again. Sending an SMS to a short code in broadcast or print media is only the start of the mobile journey.

Mobile internet takes off
A new generation of 3G handsets is currently flooding the market allowing a superior user experience of the mobile internet and content downloads. According to research conducted by comScore and Telephia an estimated 5.7m people in the UK used a mobile device to access the internet during January 2007 which represents 19 per cent of the 30m people who accessed the web from a PC – a further example of the role mobile plays in bringing people from the offline world into the online environment.

Vodafone is the latest of the operators to offer flat rate data charges, removing one of last barriers to people browsing the mobile web.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />