Mobile Adv

RESEARCH

Why SMS Advertising?

“The ‘Reply 1’ feature dramatically increased alert subscriptions and proved that a call to action within a text message was effective.”

The mobile advertising industry, although nascent, already offers a wide array of options through which advertisers can reach captive audiences. In terms of the broad technologies currently available, mobile advertising manifests itself on the Mobile Internet (WAP), as part of cell phone client applications, and through text messaging services (SMS). It is the last of these, SMS, that will be the focus of this paper, and in particular, the remarkable promise that this form of advertising shows as a vehicle for reaching a highly receptive and responsive audience through the use of targeted, unobtrusive, and actionable advertisements. The aim is to provide clarity on the potential of SMS advertising by presenting a historical account of the research and discovery processes that took place at 4INFO over the course of 2005 and 2006 leading to the refinement of our interactive advertisement offering.

Background

4INFO launched in February of 2005, initially focused on providing a mobile search solution for end consumers through text messaging, WAP sites, and a downloadable client application products. In 2006 4INFO launched an alerts product as part of its coverage of the NCAA Championship Tournament. This product introduced a new subscription mechanism that enabled users to sign up for an alert by responding to a call to action presented in the results of an SMS search request. The simple call to action appeared at the end of search results with a brief statement: “Reply  for game end alert”. The “Reply ” feature, as it came to be known, dramatically increased alert subscriptions and proved that a call to action within a text message was an effective means of getting users to take action beyond simply reading the content they had been sent. During the course of the NCAA Tournament, the feature...