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SMS Marketing Hampered By Consumer’s Footing The Bill For Ad?

Perhaps it’s not the mobile ad itself that consumers so object to, but the ignominy of having to pay for it.

Two surveys have surfaced on mobile ads, concluding pretty much the same thing: SMS marketing dominates. But the Direct Marketing Association has also found that 7 percent of those surveyed actually said they were interested in receiving ads on their cellphone, while a promising 24 percent of those who have received text ads said they’d responded to them.

Direct Marketing Association VP of Research Edward T. Manzitti called mobile phones one of the “hottest new channels available” and said that much of the opposition to text ads came from the fact that recipients often have to pay for them—especially if they don’t have a text bundle. Manzitti told the NYT, “If the carriers offered marketers a different type of pricing, where the marketer paid the cost rather than the consumer, you’d see a different type of response.”

Meanwhile, a mobile advertising survey from mobile social network Limbo and market research firm Gfk Technology, the number of American consumers who recall seeing advertising through their mobile phone climbed to 37 percent in the second quarter, compared to 31 percent a year ago, with 22 percent recalling having received text ads, compared to 8 percent recalling mobile web ads, and 3 percent recalling have heard ads through their mobile’s radio. Mobile web advertising was most prevalent in the UK, where 16 percent of respondents recalled advertising compared with 8 percent of those in the US and 4 percent of those in India. Advertising through radios on mobile phones did particularly will in India, with nearly 40 percent of those in India recalling advertisements through radio on their mobile phones compared to only 9 percent in the UK and 3 percent in the US (release).

Aug 13, 2008 9:19 AM ET

Posted In: Advertising

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Comments (3)

Aug 13, 2008 11:58 AM

I changed service providers when I started getting text ads and they told me I could not turn off SMS reception entirely. I don’t text a lot, and when I do, it is for an emergency, so the last thing I want are ads - especially on a medium that should have died a long time ago and been replaced with IM even on mobile phones.

akatsuki

Aug 13, 2008 2:22 PM

The problem with direct consumer SMS Marketing is that the majority is NOT requested by the consumer. The practice of sending unwanted (not requested) advertising information gives a very bad image to the companies that do not send information UNLESS it is requested from the consumer. Consumers should never have to pay for an ad that they did not request.

Sierra Night Tide

Aug 13, 2008 6:21 PM

SMS advertising within the existing SMS infrastructure will only succeed in a limited way - as a CPM branding play.

I haven’t seen any results of successful measurable - CPC or CPA - SMS campaigns.  Nor has Google, which is why they gave up on their SMS advertising efforts and focused on building a mobile platform where they can apply what they learned from web advertising.  That is, where they can build a platform that can deliver multiple ad types and measure and track the results.

tom

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