Text messages tapped for ads
By Carlos Grande, E-Business Correspondent
Published: January 29 2001 21:53GMT | Last Updated: January 29 2001 22:34GMT
British broadcasters are targeting users of mobile phone text messages, who sent 750m paid-for messages - more than 1m an hour - in December alone.
All three commercial terrestrial channels - ITV, Channel 5 and E4, a new pay-television channel from Channel 4 - have launched campaigns in the past two weeks using text messages as trailers for shows or inviting viewers' messages via on-screen prompts.
Teletext, the news and information service, already sends 150,000 free news, financial and sports updates a week via SMS (short message services) and is planning to expand its television tie-ins to the service.
Next month, Mars, the confectionery group, expects to become the first television advertiser to make one of its advertising tunes available as a free mobile phone ringtone delivered a s a text message.
The plan is to encourage television viewers to watch with a television remote control in one hand and a mobile phone in the other.
The success of SMS, which has been embraced by teenagers and twenty-somethings, is in marked contrast to the slow take-up of web-based mobile services.
SMS monthly volumes are expected to top 1bn by the summer, according to the Mobile Data Association, an industry body, which will generate an estimated £1bn ($1.5bn) a year in SMS revenues. Content providers want to share this revenue, which is currently almost pure profit for wireless operators. But some fear that peak television audiences may simply overwhelm SMS systems, which performed badly under heavy demand at Christmas.
Aerodeon, a start-up company behind one television SMS campaign, said that text messages allowed programmers and brands to reach key demographics at low cost, and enjoy high respons e rates. Andrew Jones, chief executive of Aerodeon, said television companies would initially offer free messages, some via sponsorship deals.
In the longer term, they would seek to negotiate a share of revenues on messages sent by viewers.
"Television is the obvious next step for SMS into the mass market. Brands and programmers will want a share of the value they create," Mr Jones said. About half of children in the UK aged seven to 16 have mobile phones, and of these one in ten is a WAP internet phone, according to a poll from NOP Research. Children send an average 2½ text messages per day, with 14 to 16-year-olds sending about three a day. Analysts said the figures bode well for mobile companies. |
