Trends in Mobile Marketing

Mike Acierno
Reporter
11-23-2004

Several key technology events in the mobile phone industry have set the stage for the wireless web to offer advertisers right content, reach and presence to make it worth spending money in this data services media channel.

Data services include technologies such as the wireless web, video, text messaging, game downloads, instant messaging and email. And together they are transforming the mobile phone into an always-with-you information and entertainment device.

There are currently 169 million U.S. consumers that own or have access to a mobile phone. This number is expected to increase to 200 million by 2007. And of those 200 million cell phone users, as many as 84 million are expected to be data subscribers, up from 26 million subscribers in 2002.

And while no one has come up with the killer app in mobile data services, it's reported that browsing mobile site content has increased from 11 percent of all data subscribers to 35 percent in 2004.

All these numbers have caught the eye of advertisers. Consumers now have the ability to use their mobile phones to view weather, sports, news, entertainment and other types of content. And smart advertisers are taking buying interactive ads within ad supported mobile content.

Mobile advertising has to date consisted primarily of Short Message Service (SMS) campaigns. Text messaging and SMS campaigns have driven the market and have made the biggest impact, similar to what ring tones and wallpaper did for mobile content. As the U.S. embraces mobile trends it is logical to expect that the U.S. will follow the trend of increasing SMS usage.