At day two of the Mobile Marketing Association’s forum in New York City, some interesting industry stats were released that give us an insight into the growth and use of various forms of mobile marketing.

As usual, the growth rate for mobile marketing as a whole is expected to be around 26% this year- much lower than recent year’s projections, but still impressive nonetheless when compared to other forms of advertising.  It was estimated by the group that overall marketing expenditures will be down 7% this year, so any growth in mobile is more than welcomed.  

More research shows that brands are more comfortable with mobile than agencies- about half of agencies said they overall viewed mobile marketing as still being part of experimental expending, compared to 36% of brands.  Even more surprising, both brands and agencies reported having “average” success with mobile efforts compared to other marketing channels.

While that might not be the ringing endorsement the industry would like to hear, especially at an event dedicated to mobile marketing, MMA President and CEO Mike Wehrs said the increase in mobile spending despite the downturn shows that more dollars are shifting to the category from traditional media. “The benefits of mobile marketing are clear and they’re being proven out,” said Wehrs, in terms of metrics like ad response rates and brand lift found in MMA case studies.

The stats and information released at this year’s event seem to prove that the recession and reduced ad-spend overall are hitting the mobile channel just as hard, and being a new and largely un-tested form of marketing doesn’t help either.  Hopefully by this time next year, the numbers will be on the uptake once again.

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SMS services are a dime a dozen these days it seems, with new platforms and methods being introduced at a rapid pace, but when a large-scale media company introduces SMS as part of its portfolio of offerings, it provides a massive platform for SMS expansion.

Such is the case with CBS Outdoor’s introduction of SMS capability for its advertisers’ media campaigns.  The program, called txt2go, will include a text keyword on advertiser signage that the public can use to access marketing messages from its various clients.  Yes, this may seem like just another SMS service, but with a massive media company like CBS behind it, it immediately becomes something substantial.

In launching txt2go, CBS Outdoor becomes the nation’s very first out-of-home media company to provide a complete text messaging solution for its clients.  The add-on feature creates an affordable new avenue for advertisers looking to package into their media features like digital couponing, sweepstakes, direct response and point of purchase.  The technology will allow advertisers to track responses to their marketing in real time, and do so on a scale they’ve likely never been able to before.

The underlying SMS technology is being provided to CBS by Rip Road, a mobile media and marketing company who has provided SMS and other mobile technologies to many national brands and large media companies in recent years.  ”Our experience has shown that when we allow a consumer to engage with a brand or advertiser on their terms, the desired participation increases dramatically,” said Eric Leven, Chief Executive Officer, Rip Road. “This mobile application lets an advertiser generate the tremendous value an outdoor effort provides, as well as start communicating with prospects through coupons, discounts, news and much more.”

It should be interesting to see how CBS leverages its new-found technology and whether its huge national brands embrace SMS as part of their more traditional advertising campaigns.

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At Visiongain’s Mobile Advertising and Marketing Awards & Conference 2009 in London last week, Upstream and Telefonica-02 out of the Czech Republic took home a Gold “MAMA” award for their collaboration of the highly successful “100 BMW” mobile promotion that took place in November of last year.

Spearheaded by Upstream, a global mobile marketing company, the “100 BMW” mobile promotion which garnered the Gold award at MAMA for “best use of mobile in driving new revenue and sales,” consisted of utilizing SMS messaging to allow users to enter to win BMW vehicles.  The promotion proved very successful and drove a considerable amount of traffic and new revenue to Telefonica-02, one of the largest mobile operators in the Czech Republic.

Users were encouraged to send in SMS messages as entries to win BMW vehicles, thus generating massive revenues for the carrier via SMS charges, as well as capturing contact information and opt-in status from everyone that entered the promotion.

“We are absolutely delighted with the MAMA 2009 Gold award for the 100 BMW Promotion organised with Upstream,” said Matts Johansen, Chief Marketing Officer of Telefonica O2 Czech Republic. The promotion was a significant commercial success for Telefonica O2 and this award represents recognition for the hard work of the teams from both Upstream and Telefonica O2.”

The “100 BMW” promotion was by far the largest and most successful mobile campaign ever launched in the Czech Republic, with over 400,000 participants, an average of 13 participations per subscriber, and premium SMS revenues in excess of €5M for Telefonica-02.

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I came across an article recently that spoke about mobile marketing still being so “complicated and complex” that it almost isn’t worth it unless it’s part of an “integrated marketing campaign.”

whatever the case may be, the overall concensus with one panel at last week’s OMMA Mobile concluded that mobile marketing is still simply “not ready.”  Nobody disagreed with the fact that using mobile marketing as part of a larger integrated marketing campaign makes perfect sense, but as standalone campaigns, it doesn’t make sense due to “all the time involved.”

What’s interesting about these conclusions are the people that were on this particular panel- Linda Gridley, President of a small M&A boutique focused on internet and marketing services; Evan Kraus, Global SVP Ad Sales, Jumptap; Adam Schlacter, Senior Partner, Digital Practice Lead, Mediaedge:cia; and Steven Siegel, Mobile Solutions Specialist, Microsoft Advertising.  The theme?  They all work in the realm of online marketing in one form or fashion, mobile mobile marketing.

The panel also mentions the intense “learning curve” associated with mobile marketing campaigns, which I guess is true to a degree, but overall it makes too much sense to ignore.  The time to strike and become oriented in the ways of mobile marketing are now instead of the years when every brand around is using SMS and flooding their mobile sites with display advertising.

Another interesting conclusion the panel made was that this year “probably won’t be the breakout year for mobile,” blaming the recession and again, the learning curve.

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If you’re like me, you should have expected SMS marketing to appear in droves during the Olympics, for a variety of reasons.� With NBC gifted the sole rights to broadcast the Olympics in the US, they’ve selected SinglePoint, an interactive mobile marketing company, to handle the SMS side of things.

The 2008 Olympics “mobile alerts program” introduces the largest number of selections ever offered to a U.S. audience, and includes almost any type of information you can think of.� From daily news alerts, real-time information, and breaking news, to athlete alerts, medal results, event reminders, and much more.� Users can even elect to receive multimedia alerts, with things like video highlights and a photo of the day- categorized by sports category.

SinglePoint has admitted that this was the largest undertaking it’s ever been involved in.� The amount of detail, coordination, and sheer amounts of data that have to flow through the system could create problems, but they say everything, so far, is running smoothly.

I was wondering who would come out with SMS alerts and combined marketing that aimed to ride the success of the Olympics and the sheer amounts of subsequent worldwide viewers, but I didn’t know how it would work out given NBC has the sole rights to broadcasting.� Their selection of SinglePoint, while it’s unknown why they were chosen, was a great idea to extend their reach.

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Gumiyo, a mobile marketing platform provider for auto dealers, Realtors, and classified advertisers, announced the introduction of its “Mobile Ready” program aimed at educating agencies and mobile-based advertising providers on key aspects of mobile campaign deployment.

Gumiyo’s main business is providing an all-in-one solution for deploying large inventories for auto dealers and other similar industries, as well as incorporating a mobile-based CRM system into the mix to better interact with a dealer’s mobile-users. Gumiyo is hoping that by educating the people that make decisions in terms of consulting auto-dealer’s mobile marketing needs, they can ingrain their brand and product offerings into the minds of the decision makers and subsequently gain a larger following.

Its a pretty good tactical move on Gumiyo’s part. By starting at the source, they’re getting their name into the mix before any other competitors get a chance to. In this emerging industry, this is very important.

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A difficult aspect of launching successful mobile campaigns is the fact that it’s hard to build a campaign that works between all devices, carriers, and other variables. Most mobile ad-agencies don’t have the in-house know-how to be able to produce a comprehensive campaign that will reach the masses.

Paris-based advertising holding company Publicis Groupe announced recently plans to partner with Yahoo to provide better mobile marketing offerings and a true all-in-one service to provide cross-device, and cross-carrier advertising worldwide.

They’ve integrated their mobile marketing agency, Phonevalley, with Yahoo’s Blueprint technology which is the backbone of Yahoo! Go. “Go” is a platform that supports widgets and third-party apps on mobile devices. Blueprint, in theory, allows developers to create an app once that can run on the Yahoo Go platform, which is then compatible with hundreds of phones around the world. Their intention with this is to provide brands working with Publicis the ability to tap into this capability, making it easier to develop one campaign that could work on various phones, carriers and across multiple countries.

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