12 Reasons for Businesses to Consider Mobile Advertising

The question many businesses are asking these days is whether it pays for them to advertise via SMS (Short Message Service) or what’s commonly referred to as text messaging. mobileSQUARED published an industry report, “Conversational Advertising,” in June 2010 (commissioned by SinglePoint) which offers some intriguing facts and figures.

Let’s take a look at the 12 reasons why you’d want to seriously consider mobile advertising now and in the years ahead:

1. Mobile Usage Hours Per Year
Mobile phone is in the possession of the average user for 5,840 hours per year via conversational advertising.

2. Rate at Which Text Messages are Read
Messages are read within 3 minutes of their delivery. Over 99% of all text messages are read by the recipient.

3. Ability to Get to Users All Times of Day
According to research conducted by Pew Internet in September 2009, texting is the primary reason that teenagers will sleep with their cell phone next to them.

4. Mobile Advertising Spending
Messaging dominated mobile advertising spending in the last decade.

5. Mobile Advertising App Activity
80% of apps on the iPhone App Store are downloaded 10,000 or less.

6. Far-Reaching
The mobile Internet is becoming a mainstream activity for hundreds of millions of users around the world (in developed, and also developing countries where mobile is often the first screen.)

7. Response and Engagement
Text’s reach and ease of use for customers (and potential customers) to respond provides unprecedented levels of response and engagement.

8. Campaign-Friendly
Brands can use a series of messages over a number of hours.

9. Communication as a Core Strategy
At the core of all mobile consumption is communication. Mobile devices offer the opportunity to create a strategy that seamlessly integrates with the brand’s marketing communication strategies.

10. U.S. Statistics
In the U.S. 300 million users send over 4 billion texts a day—an average of 13.3 per user. Almost 65% and 50% of mobile users in their 40s and 50s, now regularly send texts.

11. Acceptance of Mobile Advertising
U.S.

Conversational advertising in the U.S. will be worth US $47.8 million in 2010, rising to US $2.04 billion in 2015.

Conversational advertising will represent 8% of total mobile marketing messaging activity in 2010, but will be dominant model in marketplace by 2015, commanding 72% for total mobile marketing messaging.

U.K.
UK will more likely be more accepting of Conversational Advertising than the US, with 60% of respondents interested in the concept.

In 2010, Conversational advertising in the UK will be worth US $131 million, and representing 11% of total mobile marketing messaging revenues. By 2015, Conversational advertising will be worth US $670.3 million and represent almost 80% of total mobile marketing messaging revenues.

India & China
India (along with China) will be one of the mobile superpowers. The country will have 686.6 million mobile subscriptions by the end of 2010, and is forecast to cross the 1 billion mark in 2013. Mobile advertising in India is expected to grow from US $4 million in 2009 to US $20 million in 2010.

12. Strengths and Benefits of Mobile over Traditional Advertising Campaigns
Personal Relationships:
Traditional advertising fails to capitalize on the personal relationships consumers have with their mobile devices.

Are mobile ads reaching you? How has this changed in the past 6 months to one year?  Will you consider mobile advertising for your business this year?

photo credit: lirneasia’s photostream