Proteus, an Arlington, Vir.-based company that’s owned by UK-based 2ergo, is launching a service this week called Via that helps brands, advertising agencies, retailers and local businesses to quickly create SMS-based alerts, polls, trivia and sweepstakes campaigns. The company gave me a sneak peak of Via last week and from what I saw, it makes a lot of sense. Most text campaigns today are limited to big media companies for TV shows or by mobile-content companies because they have a big budget and employees who understand the ins and outs of the industry.

To help everything from a pizza joint to a dry cleaner launch their own campaign, Proteus created a simple Web interface, where anyone can fill out an online form, including such fields as a campaign title, the text of the message, and an optional footer that may include a short ad. The part that Proteus handles is provisioning the campaign with all the carriers, securing the shortcode, and making sure that the campaign corresponds with all of the different guidelines mandated by all the carriers. Proteus President Guy Vidra said: “The carrier rules and regulations have made it difficult to navigate. If you aren’t an aggregator, and regularly launch campaigns, you don’t know what it takes to get it provisioned and approved to launch....It’s a pretty confusing pace, I understand the resistance on the other side of the table.”

The launch of the product marks an overall change at the company, which is moving away from providing services to carriers to helping brands and media companies understand the wireless space. About three months ago, the company launched a product called Swift that helps media companies easily build a WAP site. It has already assisted the development of 1,000 sites, including one for Fox News and also a local jeweler. As part of the new direction, the company expects to rebrand the U.S. division 2ergo America this summer. “Our overall philosophy is to simplify the mobile space and make it as transparent as possible. Today, we have pricing all over the place, and you have rules and regulations that’s difficult for an outsider to understand.”