Mobile Marketing: Back in Business
By Ingrid Lunden - Mon 16 Jul 2007 05:11 AM PST
New unlimited text plans have revived the mobile marketing industry in the U.S., according to the New York Times. (In the past, marketeers had held back from the mobile route because unsolicited text messages were seen as annoying spam by those who were paying for the privilege of receiving them.)
Online retailers, some of the most obvious and earliest users of online advertising, don’t get the award for innovation here, says the NYT. The biggest trend-setters in the mobile marketing space have been the “offline” retailers like Coca Cola and American Express. This is because most mobile marketing has been about trying to give more “stickiness” to single brands, rather than actually getting people to use their phones to buy products. Mobile commerce, in fact, still has some way to go before it is ubiquitous. Of the 230 million people who use mobile phones in the U.S., half have sent or received text messages, but only 32 million have used their handsets to surf the Web. (Luckily for PayPal, which recently launched a new payment service for the mobile Internet, it will be targeting users in other countries as well.)
The other major trend in mobile marketing has been the increasing involvement of big media firms, by way of M&A. AOL purchasing Third Screen Media, and Aegis buying Marvellous Mobile—among other acquisitions—have helped bridge the connection between big media buying clients, technology, and dealing with mobile operators.
Posted in: Mobile Adv & Mktg, Technologies, Payments
