Friday, June 15, 2007

Case Study - ANWB

Goals:
Mobile ticketing improves customer service and helps to generate new revenue streams through new and existing customers.

Idea:
ANWB, the tourist organization for drivers, bicyclists and walkers/hikers in the Netherlands, implemented the VS2300M reading solution to control admission to the Efteling amusement park. In summer 2003, the tourist organization ANWB started a mobile ticketing pilot project on behalf of the Efteling recreation and Adventure Park in Holland. Instead of buying entrance tickets at the counter, customers could purchase them online from the ANWB website and get a discount when using their mobile phone as the entrance ticket. Once the tickets were ordered from the ANWB website and payment completed, the customer was sent a text message containing a two-dimensional code (Data Matrix) to his mobile phone.

Results:
At the Efteling park entrance, the customer needed only to present his mobile phone with the Data Matrix entry code displayed to the VS2300M scanners that were in place at some control points. The VS2300M reading systems first decoded the Data Matrix code, checked it for validity against the ANWB databse via a GPRS connection and then granted entrance to the park.

Source: Mobile Marketing Association

Social Networking Conference - Courtyard Marriott Downtown

This event will focus solely on mobile markets for the Social Networking business. Many have suggested that the mobile usage of the internet will eclipse computers and laptop usage. For the social networking and online personals industry, this technology represents the road to the future. Mobile social networking and mobile personals is strongest in Europe and is growing significantly in the Far East. North American mobile usage of web-based applications has grown significantly over the last 12 to 18 months.

Description: Many have suggested that the mobile usage of the internet will eclipse computers and laptop useage. For the social networking and online personals industry, this technology represents the road to the future. Mobile social networking and mobile personals is strongest in Europe and is growing significantly in the Far East. North American mobile useage of web-based applications has grown significantly over the last 12 to 18 months.

This event will focus solely on mobile markets for the Social Networking business. It is for dating/social networking executives that have an interest in learning about new technologies, marketing strategies, business management, networks and mobile telecom. Attending will be:

# Social networking business executives
# Online personals industry business executives
# Software & mobile technology executives
# Venture Capitalists
# Mobile device and PDA manifacturers
# Mobile telecommunication executives
# Mobile/Wireless marketing executives
# Media executives
# Mobile payment processing executives
# Affiliate managers
# Affiliates and portal webmasters of social networking related sites.

Experts in management, mobile technology and marketing for social networking with experience with the mobile/wireless market will present. For example, we plan on having a 90 minute workshop covering business models for mobile. Also we will have a workshop on the latest software for mobile devices for the social networking and online personals marketplace: How to plan and implement software, which types of software (ex: WAP, JAVA) to use, how to install and distribute for various wireless phones. We will also cover the mobile dating market in specific regions and countries as well.

Source: Social Computing Magazine

Thursday, June 14, 2007

Case Study - Snapple (Mobile Marketing)

Goals:
1) Increase campaign awareness of Snapple's SNAFFLE promotion

2) Keep Snapple on consumer's mind during peak purchase hours

3) Gather market intelligence and build mobile database for future re-marketing efforts

Solution:
Snapple's mobile marketing program was built around "Snaffle", Snapple's main promotion for the critical summer months. Snapple printed numbers on 225 million bottle caps that the public could then match with winning Snaffle numbers. The winning Snaffle numbers were announced on TV, on the web and delivered via text message (SMS), and allowed participants to win prizes. Throughout the summer, twelve drawings were held and three prizes were offered at each drawing. SMS alerts with the winning Snaffle numbers were sent out during lunchtime and peak purchase times of the day - maximizing on the strength of mobile communication.

Results:
Ninety three percent of all consumers who received the SMS alerts read them, and 24% were more positive about Snapple as a result of receiving the messages. 33% of those who participated bought additional Snapple products as a result.

Source: Mobile Marketing Association

The ABC's of Mobile Marketing

If you're unfamiliar with the mobile space's players and ecosystem, selecting the ideal mobile partner can be daunting. This column will explain the mobile value chain and provides some questions for you -- the brand or agency -- to ask your prospective mobile partners, prior to making any selection decisions.

Although many players in the space are integrating across the value chain, there are four main elements:

* Products and services. Includes brands, agencies, and third-party content providers. These are the companies seeking collaboration and partnership with others within the value chain. We also see the emergence of mobile agencies and the creation of mobile divisions within larger agencies, which help with the end-to-end decisions around the mobile campaign. Depending on your needs, the mobile agencies may be what you're looking for.

* Mobile ASPs (define). Includes application and technology providers, along with the MASP. The MASP is the mobile partner that can provide a complete, one-stop solution for a mobile campaign, including mobile storefronts, campaign planning, and connectivity.

* Connection. Includes aggregators and wireless operators. Many players in the mobile space are focused on connection only. Many MASPs are partnered with these companies, and thus connection players don't need to be contacted directly (although, again, it depends on your needs).

* Media and retail. Includes brick-and-mortar, e-tail, and so on.

Many brands are baffled. With so many companies to choose from and so many differences between the companies, how can you possibly find the right partner? It's best to first determine the capabilities you're looking for, then develop a checklist so you can narrow the selections and determine the partner that's right for you. According to Nihal Mehta, CEO of ipsh!, finding the right partner is one of the most important decisions you can make when choosing to integrate mobile into your cross media campaign. "Finding the right partner in the mobile marketing space makes the difference between a successful campaign and a complete flop," says Nihal.

Develop a checklist that includes the elements important to you and your company. Also ensure you include the following:

* How many campaigns has your mobile company launched? With which companies and brands? The number of campaigns and the size of the brands a company's worked with helps you understand its level of expertise. A partner should provide you with a list of contact companies and brands it's worked with, along with references.

* What are your company's customer care resources? Do I receive a dedicated account manager or support person? This should include number of support individuals, response times, levels of care (SLAs), and so forth. For those who appreciate personalized service, understanding if the same individual will be involved throughout your campaign may be important.

* Does your company provide proactive monitoring and reporting on my campaign? For example, does the company provide statistics and information throughout the campaign, or only at the end? Is this information available via a client extranet or must you depend on the agency to supply this data? Answers to these questions are important as ongoing feedback will help you understand and tweak the campaign throughout (iterative feedback and refinement).

* To what extent is the mobile company focused on your particular niche? If you're a player in the business-to-business (B2B) space, does the mobile partner understand how you do business? If you're a nonprofit, does your mobile partner understand the intricate nature of grassroots fundraising and donor management? If you're a large brand marketer, does your mobile partner understand all the channels you speak through and can it help augment them with a mobile program that works in concert?

* What types of services are offered? Is the partner company a mobile agency, an aggregator, other? Can you provide Web-related development that brings a mobile program to life or help to guide this process? How does its services match to your specific needs? For example, will you look to the partner company to execute creative and strategic direction in addition to connectivity?

In this case, developing a needs checklist is important in assessing a potential partner company. Be honest about which services you need and which you don't. If you're looking for creative input, ensure you pick a company that values creativity and personalization.

* Can the mobile partner help determine the campaign objectives through an ROI (define) calculation or other quantitative or qualitative means? This will help you determine if your mobile partner understands what your needs and priorities are prior to the campaign launch. Some mobile companies specialize in certain vertical segments. If you're looking for expertise for your vertical, ask around.

* What wireless carriers do you have direct or indirect connectivity to? Depending on your campaign, this is an important question if you're planning to launch nationwide or global campaigns across all carriers, or only with one carrier, standard or premium rate.

* How stable is the partner company? What are the funding and employee count, and how long has the company been in operation? What's its core focus and competencies (e.g., aggregation, licensing, creative, etc.)? If you're considering a long-term partnership for your mobile initiatives, these are important questions to ask. There are a large number of both established and new entrants in the space.

Source: ClickZ

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Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Case Study - Sprite 3G Mobile Content Downloads (Mobile Marketing)

Goals:
Increase brand awareness for 'a new member of the Sprite family...'

Idea:
Sponge were requested by UK interactive agency, Weapon 7, to fulfill the mobile part of their interactive TV campaign for Sprite 3G. The TV advertisement featured an elf-like creature alongside a can of Sprite 3G offering viewers to get 'both sprites for free.'

The can of Sprite 3G was made available to viewers pressing their blue button via interactive TV, to order a postal coupon to redeem their free can of drink.

Viewers texting in the SPRITE keyword to the 5-digit shortcode promoted during the TV ad received a video download of a dancing elf-like 'sprite 3G' to their mobile by wap push.

The elf-like Sprite 3G arrived as a video download of the dancing creature, delivered to viewer's mobile phones by wap push as a result of the viewer texting in the SPRITE keyword to the shortcode promoted during the TV advertisement.

Sponge worked with Weapon 7 to ensure the content was of highest quality and compatible with a maximum number of mobile handsets, and managed the content delivery.

Results:
Higher than expected response rate: "we've almost surpassed our target number of interactions for the whole campaign with a week still to go...!" - Joanna Moynihan, 'Sprite' Brand Manager, UK

Source: Mobile Marketing Association

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Mobile Marketing WAP

I’m finding myself scurrying just to keep up with the wave of recent research and metrics regarding mobile usage. As long as I’ve been covering the mobile field, I have had trouble getting a handle on how much and how often U.S. mobilistas fire up the data channel on their phones. For activities like gaming and mobile search, I have seen wildly inflated figures passed around -- 30% to 40% penetration rates that don’t even pass a simple eyeball check on the street.

Unscientific as the sample might be, I spend a lot of time in airports, on lines, and in waiting rooms checking out the mobile activity around me, and the share of people peering into their phones to do more than speed-dial a friend remains visibly small. Shifting my location reorients my sample, so sitting in Starbucks at the local university reveals what some college-based mobile marketers have been telling me for months: the 18-to-24 demo is now starting to use their phones as portable PCs. You really do see a lot of these kids peering into their flip phones and two-thumb keyboarding.

I learned to trust my gut on these eyeball checks a few years ago when covering the gaming industry. Being a parent of a ten-year-old brought me into the living rooms of a lot of houses with kids, and invariably the main TV was running a video game, not TV programming. When the metrics companies finally caught up, they formalized what any parent already knew: the game console was eroding TV’s time share.

For the upcoming OMMA Mobile conference on June 29 in New York, we have asked some of the leading keepers of the numbers to come in and report more scientifically on our current knowledge of mobile metrics. I already anticipate hearing about a spike in mobile Web usage this year. Again, I use the subjective measure of my own patterns. In just the last six months, while at conferences, on commutes, etc., I have come to identify the phone as a medium. I have amassed a reliable collection of media alerts, feeds, and WAP bookmarks that I now consult habitually in a few spare moments.

M:Metrics reports that about 9.6% of mobile users accessed news or information on phones in March, which is not much different from the 10% they reported about the same activity in March 2006. On the other hand, content provider and m-commerce enabler Bango says it saw a threefold increase in mobile Web traffic coming from the U.S. So I still have no idea how much more WAP usage is going on, but my gut tells me that if I am doing more of it, then others are, too. In almost every case, however, it is a third-party publisher pulling me into the data channel, not the deck itself.

Now, more than ever, I have come to see that it is the third-party content providers that will be the real change agents in the mobile eco-system. They are the ones who will dial up mobile content for their users, not the carriers. As I talk to more and more content providers, the story is the same. The users of their WAP sites, wallpapers, ringtones, etc. all tell them that they are relatively new to using phones in these ways. “We didn’t know we could do this with our phones,” customers tell the publishers again and again. They are being drawn to the new platform by the third-party channel, not the carriers.

Once again, the carriers seem to be out of the media loop they themselves are building. They are terrible educators. At the sales level, they are not showing customers what they can do with their phone, and on the merchandising level, they are not teasing the user with enough demos, pre-loaded applications and bookmarks, to encourage using the data channel. And on the partnership level, they are not working with many publishers to encourage general use of the phone as an everyday media platform.

OMMA Mobile’s Short Code Theater

The one metric no one seems to question is the use of SMS messaging. Well over a third of mobile users sent a text message in March -- almost 70 million, according to M:Metrics. By any measure, that is a critical mass. And here is another example of a phone habit proliferating because of users, not the carriers. Apparently, the teens who first embraced SMS actually taught their parents how to use it by texting them. Again, I go to personal metrics. I know I can more effectively communicate with my 15-year-old daughter when she is out and about via SMS than by voice.

As a marketing channel, SMS has become much more reliable in just the last year. I test just about every short code a marketer tosses at me, just to see where they lead, and just six months ago I was appalled at the failure rate. So many short code queries went unanswered I started asking around about failure rate metrics in the industry. No one had any to share. This year, again using my gut metrics, the SMS situation seems much improved. And at OMMA Mobile we hope to show off just how well SMS marketing is doing.

We invite mobile marketers and brands to submit entries in our own OMMA Mobile Short Code Theater. Submit to us your best campaign that is initiated by a short code. It can be any mobile marketing campaign (video, WAP push, etc) so long as the consumer initiates the exchange with an SMS code. We will ask all entrants to put their prompt and a visual explanation for the campaign on a single PowerPoint slide that attendees can view and activate for themselves on their own phones during the show. Attendees will be able to vote on their favorite campaign via our own SMS voting system at OMMA Mobile.

Source: Media Post

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Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Case Study - Pepsi Super Bowl

Background:
In the run up to the 2007 Super Bowl, Pepsi unveiled 15 new can designs and created a range of promotions as part of a major new branding initiative. Its Super Can contest gave fans the chance to win Super Bowl tickets for life and a jewel-encrusted can valued at $100,000. Alongside traditional and online promotions, Pepsi also became the latest brand to deploy a mobile advertising program on the Sprint Mobile Media Network, and one of the first to incorporate video into its campaign.

Objectives:
  • Expand the promotion of its Super Can contest
  • Increase awareness of the 15 new Pepsi can designs
  • Drive traffic to its mobile web site
  • Increase video and wallpaper downloads
Solution:
Sprint Nextel has been defining a highly sophisticated new advertising channel on its mobile web browsing pages through the Sprint Mobile Media Network. It offers brands a direct, powerful and interactive way to reach mobile consumers. Pepsi was able to cut through the noise around the Super Bowl as the exclusive advertiser on the Sprint Mobile Media Network's homepage in the days leading up to the big game. And, as a result, drove consumers from four different banner display ads to Pepsi's branded mobile web site, where consumers engaged in a variety of actions.

Pepsi enabled users to download a custom wallpaper of the "blinged-out" Pepsi can, click to see the video spots featuring the new Pepsi can designs, and click through to Sprint Power View -- the only made-for-mobile video programming network in the United States with original sports and entertainment shows -- where they could view live Super Bowl video clips sponsored by Pepsi.

Sprint's mobile web ad serving vendor, Enpocket, and Sprint Power View delivery partner, IMG, assisted in the execution of this multi-faceted campaign.

Results
  • 9 million impressions
  • An average click through rate of 4.5 percent, with the most popular creative achieving an 11.5 percent average
  • 175,000 Pepsi wallpaper downloads
The program was one of the first to integrate several engagement mechanics, including content downloads, click-to-view a video ad, and click to see a live TV broadcast. At a time when advertisers are vying for consumers' attention across multiple media channels, Pepsi built awareness and engagement for a major marketing initiative using the Sprint Mobile Media Network - leaving a lasting impression with the 175,000 people that now see the Pepsi wallpaper every time they look at their Sprint mobile phone.

Study published on May 30, 2007

Source: Mobile Marketing Association

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The Agility of Mobile Marketing

Mobile marketing is having a profound impact on the way in which companies think about, approach and implement marketing campaigns.

The immediacy in generating the content and the personal attachment people have with their phones facilitates fast moving, high impact campaigns.

Consider the time it takes to generate a TV or print campaign. First one needs an agency to create the campaign; then there is the conceptual work, the creation of the specific content and the booking of airtime, or space in print/online publications. The process of start to finish can take anything from weeks to months. Furthermore, the company has to align its business with the campaign, particularly for retail companies who use their marketing to move stock.

However, mobile marketing is far more direct and agile because a company communicates with consumers through their cellphone.

So for example, if a retailer at the start of a week wanted to have a sale that Saturday, using broadcasting or print mediums to publicise the sale would be impossible. Online advertising could be a possibility but high volume Sites would most likely have already sold their advertising space for that week.

However, the same experience as a TV, radio or print campaign could be created using MMS. In contrast to other mediums, an interactive MMS campaign with voice over, graphics and text can be created within two working days. Distribution to a base of say 200,000 MMS enabled handsets (registered handsets are verified first) could be done in a further two days and by the weekend over 90 percent of the base would most likely have been exposed to the campaign with an added knock-on effect given the viral nature of mobile marketing.

Mobile marketing can therefore be used to have a direct, immediate impact whereas other mediums need time for the message to get out into the market given people's intermittent use of those media types.

In addition, unlike other forms of marketing, a medium like MMS gives power to both the sender and receiver. Advertisers can deliver a content rich message including video, sounds, pictures and text to specific consumers, while the consumer has the choice of whether to accept or reject an incoming MMS and should be able to unsubscribe from the service at any time.

And because mobile marketing is measurable, companies can see real time reporting including when the MMS are delivered, who opens them, which numbers fail to receive the MMS and which recipients reject the message.

Along with looking at mobile marketing's ability to deliver content quickly, companies need to take cognisance of the number of phones in the market. It is difficult to say how many people have cellphones, but the three cellphone networks together claim to have a combined base of over 36-million subscribers in 2007.

Compare that to TV and radio audiences. According to the South African Advertising Research Foundation (SAARF), its 2006 AMPS (All Media and Products Survey) estimated there to be over 24.5-million adult viewers, while there were over 28.5-million radio listeners. Importantly, these figures represent people who watched TV or listened to the radio once in the space of a week. Running campaigns to this group of people takes time for the message to saturate the market.

Mobile is more direct because you're going straight to the person. Given that there are likely more cellphone users than adult TV viewers, the strength of mobile channel to deliver marketing is becoming significant. Globally cellphones clearly have the greatest penetration of devices. There are close to 2.5-billion active cellphones, compared to an estimated 900-million internet users and a billion television sets.

Mobile marketing is therefore poised to become the most powerful marketing medium in the world. It is therefore vital that companies begin to think about mobile marketing as a means of reaching out to their target market.

Source: Marketing Web

Full article here

Monday, June 11, 2007

Case Study - Chinese New Year Campaign

Date: March 19th, 2007

Company: Madhouse

Client: PepsiCo China

Background:
Pepsi is always looking for innovative ways to not just reach out to but interact with their target audience. Thus, for Pepsi's Chinese New Year campaign featuring the ever popular pop star Jolin Tsai, Pepsi turned to Madhouse to reach the young demographic which consumes more and more mobile media everyday.

Goals:
1) Drive the greatese viewership of the CNY TVC Nationwide

2) Reach China's young mobile user base who spends more of their time consuming new versus traditional media

3) Users on the move can experience Pepsi's digital content and share with friends anytime anywhere

Solution:
In cooperation with Pepsi, Madhouse built the Pepsi CNY WAP campaign site hosting downloadable content such as the Chinese New Year TV commercial and many behind-the-scenes videos

To ensure the premium presentation of content and delivering the best brand image possible, Madhouse automatically tailors content for each of the 1000's of handset models in China

Capitalizing on the customary practice of sending greetings for CNY, Pepsi CNY mobile greeting cards increased the viral effectiveness of the campaign

To drive traffic to the site, ads were served by Madhouse across a breadth of large protal and entertainment sites on Madhouse's ad network, MadNetwork

Result:
During the 2 weeks of mobile media promotion, the ads served by MadServing achieved over 8,000,000 total impressions resulting in over 3.6% click-through rate generating over 140,000 unique visitors to the Pepsi CNY WAP site

Source: Mobile Marketing Association

Full study here

Mobile Web Growth

Bango published statistics which confirm that the United States is at the forefront of a mobile web growth with a three fold increase in usage over the last year. This rapid rise, taking the US to second position behind the UK, is being fuelled by the increasing popularity of mobile search as a way of finding new content and services. By working as a “global exchange” for the mobile web, Bango is able to provide a unique insight into where users are coming from world-wide and what handsets they are using. The top five countries accessing the mobile web via Bango* in April 2007 were the UK at 27%, the US at 21%, South Africa at 11%, India at 9% and Indonesia at 3%. In total, Bango detects mobile web users from over 190 countries.

Source: Lets Go Mobile

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Mobile Marketing's Day has Come

Mobile marketing may have come of age, if last week’s Mobile Marketing Forum 2007 was any indication. Organized by the Mobile Marketing Association, the New York show is said to have attracted more than 650 delegates from the marketer and vendor sides. Compare that to 400 attendees last year, 200 in 2005 and a mere 20 in 2004. Take the potential of this medium seriously.

The sheer ubiquity of mobile usage makes this market unavoidable. The GSM Association claims there are 2.4 billion mobile phone subscribers worldwide, way more than landline users. The Yankee Group estimates that more than 350 billion text messages are exchanged monthly across the world’s mobile networks. More than 15 percent of these messages are classified as marketing or commercial communications.

Expectations are that mobile marketing will this year become a $1 billion industry, according to Laura Marriott, president of the MMA. The market for premium mobile content alone is estimated at $274 million for the first quarter.

The mobile channel, like the Internet, has several applications: communications, marketing, organizing, recording and commerce. The communications, organizing and recording aspects are in full use by consumers. It is marketing and commerce where advertisers and retailers need to put their shoulders to the wheel.

The mobile handset is the most personal electronic gadget a consumer has. To change that equation requires much convincing. Mobile has begun to catch on in the entertainment industry. Text messaging has played a critical role in the success of television shows such as “American Idol” and “Deal or No Deal.” The consumer felt sufficiently engaged in the process to text in votes or choices. The value proposition was simple: you engage with the brand or show and, in return, you influence the outcome of that effort. The consumer feels in charge and the brand gets the feedback desired.

The Mobile Marketing Forum last week attracted executives from organizations such as Coca-Cola, Walt Disney, ABC News, Major League Baseball, Clear Channel, Columbia Records, The Weather Channel, Hearst Magazines, Hachette Filipacchi, Procter & Gamble and The Associated Press. They presented case studies, ideas and tips and even announced new marketing campaigns to an audience hungry for a roadmap to effective execution.

What was heartening was that these major corporations didn’t hesitate to share knowledge. They sent their top mobile marketing, content and commerce executives. The MMA is also doing its bit. The Denver, CO-based organization will collaborate with the GSM Association to distribute a set of standards, guidelines, formats, inventory types and commercial and measurement models for mobile advertising and marketing. A new participation TV committee has been formed to create guidelines and best practices for all aspects of the interactive TV supply chain.

In terms of education, the association released an invaluable glossary of industry terms.

While there are plenty of opportunities for direct and interactive marketers to include mobile in their marketing plans, they must be fully aware of the challenges. Familiarity with technical jargon is by no means universal.

Consumers may balk at texting charges. They may also resent marketing messages on their phones. The clutter, when it eventually occurs, may not help an advertising brand's cause unless the value proposition is clear.

On the equipment side, issues like screen size and resolution and battery power need to be addressed. Pricing packages, fixed or a la carte, may be prohibitive. Lack of standard mobile advertising and measurement guidelines may slow advertiser adoption. Also, the CPMs are way too high at the moment, -- $80, by some estimates. And don’t forget the doorkeeper. No matter what the mobile marketer and vendor do, it won’t matter if there’s no signoff from the big four carriers: Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint.

Still, make the right call. Include mobile marketing in your plans.

Source: DM News

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Nielsen Measuring Mobile Phone Usage

NEW YORK (AP) — More than 33 million people have used mobile phones to access the Internet this year, according to Nielsen Media Research, which on Wednesday announced its new effort to measure such use.

With Nielsen known primarily for its ratings system for television viewing, the announcement is another indication of how it is trying to keep up with rapidly changing entertainment options.

At first, Nielsen is simply offering information culled from interviews of the 30,000 people included in its television sample. Besides the people who have used their phones for Internet access, Nielsen estimated that 8 million people viewed video on their phones during the first three months of the year.

One-quarter of all people aged 18 to 34 use their phones to access the Internet, Nielsen said.

The mobile video audience actually skews older and male: nearly half (46 percent) of this audience is aged 35 and up, and 54 percent are men, Nielsen said.

Nielsen is still unable to specifically measure what videos are hottest on cell phones. The company is working to develop technology that would accomplish this, either through a tiny meter attached to a phone or a docking station that can record how the phone was used, said Karen Gyimesi, company spokeswoman.

Source: Nola

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Way2SMS Starts Off New Era in Mobile Advertising Through Mobitisements

India's Largest Mobile Data Solutions Company Through its Unlimited Free SMS exchange platform "Way2SMS.COM" now Brings Unique and innovative Mobile advertising and branding Opportunities in the form of “Mobitisements".

Way2SMS.com provides its users text messaging absolutely free of cost. The text messages are appended with ads which can be geo-targeted. Users get this free text messaging service in exchange for opting in to have targeted ads appended to their message.

Out of the 160 characters of a standard SMS, Way2SMS offers only 92 characters to the User to send out their personal SMS. The rest of the characters are reserved for geo-targeted advertisement or Mobitisement. The smaller the users sends the message the larger the ads content will be pushed with it. Way2SMS Dynamic Ad platform allows advertisers to insert ads in 120,85 and 55 characters depending on the users personal message length.

Mr. Raju, CEO Way2SMS.com says “Mobile is the last remaining medium in which the user bears the full weight of payment – a situation that will ultimately stifle growth. Ad-funding SMS has the potential to create new measurable advertising channel for brands and provide mobile users the ability to communicate more for nothing”. Also Mr. Raju adds “For advertisers this could be the smart way to reach out to a large audience without the hassle of sending out unsolicited SMS or having to worry about mobile number database. Because, each User acts as a brand ambassador for advertisers”.

Currently, Way2SMS has nearly half million users and is expected to grow up to 1 million in next 3 months.Way2SMS intends to reach out every mobile subscriber at least once in a month. Thus Building a strong Platform for both Way2SMS users and advertisers, through an innovative concept “Mobitisements- ad supported messages”

Source: Newswire

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