Catch the A2P Wave

With the emergence of more sophisticated mobile devices offering a direct links to individual consumers and personalized tools for mass marketing, it is no surprise that multimedia message service (MMS) marketing is examine closely by advertisers and marketers. For advertising brands trying to solve the holy grail of marketing to the individual; this is practically nirvana. MMS offers the ability to leverage a plethora of push services including entertainment, sports, news, video clips, and games - to name a few. Mobile devices have associated allure when it comes to being a medium for advertising by providing a personal conduit to the valuable consumer. Marketing experts have reported that mobile marketing response rates are much higher than traditional advertising, confirming that mobile phones have a stronger return-on-investment than any other media. For mobile operators who are constantly under pressure to find more revenue opportunities, MMS marketing represent great business potential.

So why hasn't there been an explosion of MMS marketing?

The supply chain infrastructure to deliver MMS marketing is there, it's been proven to work and consumers are accepting - but there are issues related to awareness, education, pricing and MMS infrastructure capacity. While there are many arguments for MMS marketing to work effectively, there are also some significant barriers to why it isn't happening yet.

One issue is compatibility, since handsets and devices vary with different formats in areas such as screens and audio. Brand owners and advertising agencies will develop a sophisticated MMS, but they don't have control of how that format is delivered to the consumer, since the mobile network/operator now owns that consumer experience. There will most likely never be enough conformity among the many handset vendors to reduce this complexity; therefore a 'one-size-fits-all' approach is not the answer. And, with technology developing so quickly this complexity will only increase. However, with intelligent device management this issue is not insurmountable.

Another issue is that subscribers who have MMS-enabled mobile phones often don't know to configure them to receive MMS messages. It's also been reported that 50% of MMS messages fail to be delivered. From a marketer's point of view, messages are sent but there is no guarantee they will arrive. A final but significant issue is spamming, and marketing via mobile phones could be perceived as increasing this problem.

Clearly, MMS has yet to cross the bridge from being perceived as a gimmick into a mass-market cash-cow service. What will it take to reach tipping point? A new type of relationship between mobile operators and advertising brands could stimulate this, given the ability of MMS marketing to provide accurate campaign results. Advertising brands find it incredibly valuable to understand who opens, forwards and/or responds to MMS marketing messages.

MMS technology is quite advanced and advertising brands should approach this new marketing medium slowly. Advertising brands should begin their mobile marketing efforts with short-message-service, and evolve to MMS once the marketing tool is field-proven and they are able to effectively use the consumer information. A natural evolution is occurring where technical and business complexity slows but awareness and education increases. The most important of these is technical complexity, which is being addressed through high-performance messaging infrastructure, effective device management and implementation of better mobile security.

Up and down the supply chain from brand to infrastructure companies, the potential parties in control of mobile marketing have an opportunity to develop a lucrative revenue stream. As holders of vital messaging infrastructure and usage information, it is the infrastructure companies which hold the key to gaining access to these new market opportunities.

High penetration of mobile messaging and widespread acceptance of mobile messaging services (SMS and MMS) have resulted in an incredible new marketing, interaction, direct mail and payment channel for brands, advertising agencies and application service providers (ASPs). That, in turn, has created a new and potentially significant revenue opportunity for mobile operators - but it has also presented numerous challenges that must be addressed to maximize use of the mobile network as an application delivery channel.