Spanish ban on advertising on public TV (10/08/2009)
WFA research shows insight into global audience measurement (31/07/2009)
Contagious: "The rise of own brands" (31/07/2009)
Bing to power Yahoo! as part of global search deal (31/07/2009)
BRICs well-placed for economic recovery (28/07/2009)
Mobile marketing costs in US may triple by 2012
Date: 24/10/2008
According to recent reports US mobile phone operator Verizon Wireless may start charging $0.03 per outbound SMS message sent to its subscribers. That would double or triple the cost to marketers who send SMS text messages to their opted-in consumers who use Verizon.
Text messages are the biggest component of mobile message advertising, which will reach $4.5 billion in revenues in the US by 2012, from nearly $1.5 billion this year.
For its part, Verizon told The New York Times the company had not set any specific price for delivery of text messages or a date that any fee might go into effect.
Service providers have been carrying more traffic on their networks as a result of texts. Americans sent 75 billion text messages in June 2008 alone, according to the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association - up from 29 billion in June 2007.
John du Pre Gauntt, senior analyst at eMarketer, said that carriers had some justification for wanting fees from marketers because otherwise they would have to pass full costs on to consumers - which would not serve either industry.
However, Mr. Gauntt said carriers should not just look at mobile marketers as another revenue stream to tout in earnings calls. Carriers will likely start charging marketers for commercial texts at some point. "But in the long run, it will be thought of as negotiating point, rather than a threat to the freedom of the mobile Web," Mr. Gauntt concluded.
Source: eMarketer
Mobile marketing is high on the agenda of WFA's Media Committee and featured in the recent November '08 meeting hosted by Henkel in Düsseldorf. WFA members can download the meeting overview below. For more information please contact Caroline Ceska: [email protected]
Documents:
Mco_RomeMeetingOverview_25 9 08.pdf
