It’s no secret that younger consumers respond to mobile marketing much more than older consumers, but I came across an interesting case study that dove into the realm of socioeconomic and race-based demographics in regards to how they respond to mobile marketing.

Continental Airlines recently ran a marketing campaign aimed at the Hispanic-American demographic in which consumers could enter by texting a keyword to a short code or by clicking on a WAP link within an SMS alert from Univision and other various publishers.  The contest let consumers enter to win a trip for two anywhere in the world — up to $2,500 worth of plane tickets — by submitting a video.

The airline ran ads on TV, on-line banners, search engine ads, out-of-home, radio and mobile — both SMS and WAP.  After it was all said and done, the company found that their interactive ads (mobile and on-line) were more effective than their off-line ads by a long shot (not surprising) but, most interestingly, the mobile ads were five-to-ten times more effective than on-line advertising.

A ten-times better response for mobile over other forms of marketing isn’t that surprising, but mobile getting a ten-times better response over Online ads for the same campaign is pretty impressive- and speaks volumes as to what the best way to reach the Hispanic demographic is.

The case study taught Continental Airlines a thing or two about not only what mobile can do when used properly in a multi-media campaign, but also how to bolster response from certain demographics.