India. Most Indians buy cars based on mobile phone advertisements

Car makers like Maruti, Hyundai, Tata Motors and others have begun advertising heavily through cellphones which is generating higher buying decisions among Indians this year compared to global buyers. The Economic Times reports.

The mobile phone advertisements constitute 31% of buying decisions among Indians while globally this is only 8% according to the latest estimates from Carsonline.

Vodafone Australia fined for Coke SMS campaign

According to the Brisbane Times, Vodafone Hutchison Australia has been slapped with a $110000 fine after it sent out 100000 text messages as part of a marketing campaign for Coca-Cola that might have breached anti-spam laws.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) launched an investigation into whether the messages breached the 2003 Anti-Spam Act because they did not give recipients information on how to unsubscribe or contact the sender.

Read full article.

Google buys Mobile Advertiser AdMob for $ 750m

Google Inc. is paying over $750 million for mobile advertising firm AdMob, one of the Web giant's largest acquisitions to date, reports The Los Angeles Times.

As AdMob itself has described, the volume and effectiveness of mobile advertising has been skyrocketing over the last several years as more advanced smartphones have caught on, making it easier to deliver more kinds of graphical and text-based advertising to phone-toting consumers.

In a recent report, Admob said that the number of mobile ads it served had increased nearly 540% from September 2007, to 10.2 billion per month from 1.6 billion.

Read full article.

Mobile Advertising and Commerce in the UK

The Guardian on the UK's love affair with text messaging and how it's being used successfully in marketing and commerce.

Although mobile advertising is likely to grow as new functions are added to handsets, the vast majority of revenues will continue to be generated through the humble SMS for many years to come, if only because they are so popular, and cheap.

... SMS is also being used increasingly for mobile commerce as well as advertising. Orange research shows that 35% of mobile phone users have engaged in e-commerce and a good number would consider using micropayments to buy goods and services. Nearly two-thirds – around 64% – said they would be happy to buy items for under £10 if the cost were added to their phone bill.

Read full article.

Innovative use of SMS in Marketing a Deodorant

This is certainly an innovative use of SMS as a a marketing teaser, only mildly related to the product. Spotted about on Gizmodo:

To launch a new deodorant in Uruguay, the Lowe Ginkgo agency in Montevideo created an incomplete ad. The ad showed a purrty neekeed girl in a suggestive pose. It didn't, however, show any of her naughty bits. Instead, it came with blank spaces and the following text:

To complete this ad send AXE to 2345 after 9 pm.

The message made a server to send a multimedia message to your cellphone with the rest of the ad, so you could admire the complete image.

A Small Business Guide to Text-Message Marketing

The New York Times has published a Small Business Guide to Text-Message Marketing with quick tips, recommended reading and case studies.

Additional resources missing from this guide:

-- SMS and Business category on Textually

-- SMS Marketing and Advertising category on Textually

-- 101 Business Uses for SMS, a report published by Clickatell, recipient of the Moby award in the "Best Mobile Direct Response" category for its industry-first SMS campaign working with the US State Department, which sent 'live' text messages to global citizens during President Obama's Cairo and Ghana speeches this past summer.

Dot Go could be 'the Internet for text messaging'

For better or worse, text messaging has become, according to a company called Scientific Media, the most popular mobile application on Earth. And while many companies are trying to build marketing efforts around people's use of texting, it's clear there is a long way to go before those efforts are coherent. By Daniel Terdiman for CNet.

At the DemoFall 09 conference here Wednesday, Scientific Media unveiled its Dot Go service, a tool it hopes large numbers of companies will employ to try to boost their text messaging-based marketing.

The idea? Blow apart the current texting/marketing dynamic, in which companies try to get users to text questions to them, but in which there's no easy way for people to remember the so-called short codes (the five- or six-number codes people text their questions to) used by most companies.

Scientific Media's solution to this problem is to do away with each company having its own hard to remember code, and instead have all text messages to companies go through its service, which is reachable by a single short code, "Dotcom."

Dot Go imposes a single rule, Scientific Media said: The first word of any text message sent to Dotcom (368266) specifies the Internet domain a user is looking for.

One major value proposition of this, the company argued, is that text messaging works on every mobile phone, meaning that anyone with such a device can use the service.

Read full article.

Coupons You Don’t Clip, Sent to Your Cellphone

Mobile coupons — usually text messages with discount codes sent to a cellphone — are becoming the blue-light specials for the digital age, reports The New York Times, promoting last-minute clothing sales, two-for-one entrees and cheap tickets to the theater.

While some mobile coupons are sent directly from a retailer to a customer who has signed up for mobile updates, the other way for bargain-seekers to get up-to-the-minute deals is to subscribe to a mobile-coupon aggregator.

At Web sites like 8coupons, Cellfire, Yowza and Zavers, users can sign up for different retailers’ promotions in one place. The opt-in model means subscribers get only offers they want to receive, making each one worth reading.

Read full article.

Related: - Links to other articles on mobile coupons

Wish upon a mobile phone

This is an unusual campaign. Spotted on brand-e.biz.

Dutch agency Marvellous has launched The Wish Factory for Google Android-powered Vodafone HTC mobile phone.

The digital platform grants people a wish about what they’d like their handset to do, and users upload their desires to a dedicated website where they’re ranked. The brand says it will work to make one of those wishes, come true.

The idea behind the campaign is to demonstrate the personal benefits of the phone’s cutting edge technology.

Telefonica trialing “idle screen” ads

According to IntoMobile, Movistar Argentina has recently launched an “idle screen” marketing service which broadcasts news and information teasers as well as advertising messages directly to the mobile phone’s idle-screens.

Telefonica Argentinean arm tested the service as part of a six-month trial which included around 5,000 customers in Mar del Plata. Results show impressive consumer uptake with 82% of users engaged with the new communication channel on the idle screen.

Classic Nokia games made of people

Nokia's Get Out and Play campaign is an implementation of classic Nokia games (Snake, Breakout) with real people - 1000 of them moving in the street - frame by frame and step by step.

[boingboing via The Red Ferret]

Marketing: Text To Play On The Metro

Ad-funded mobile games specialist 123play.com has partnered with Metro UK to offer daily readers the chance to download mobile games for free by sending an SMS, reports 160characters.org.

The offer will be included in the print, online and mobile editions of the paper.

The 50 games come from well known publishers and have advertising ‘wrapped’ before and after the game.

Read full article.

Worst cell phone commercial

Boost Mobile TV Commercial. It's so bad it's worth watching.

[via Trendhunter]

Advertising on Mobile Phones Now the Norm

Advertising on mobile phones is becoming an increasingly mainstream phenomenon, to judge by a Limbo-GfK Technology Mobile Advertising Report (pdf) released yesterday. AdWeek reports.

Thirty-three percent of Americans with mobile phones said they recalled seeing mobile advertising during the fourth quarter of 2008. Among those with iPhones, the figure was even higher, at 41 percent. "The vast majority of these ads were seen in SMS text messages," the report notes.

What do people do when they receive mobile advertising? One-third of those who recalled getting such ads said they "responded in some way," with the most common form of response being to call a toll-free number included in the message: "16 percent of ad-aware consumers recall doing this."

Women were almost twice as likely as men to say they responded in some way to a mobile ad they'd received. In a breakdown by age, 18-24-year-olds were the most likely to report having done so.

Perhaps most encouraging for advertisers, says the report, "is the fact that one in seven people also reported that they had bought a product or visited a store as a result of seeing a mobile advertisement."

full article

Related to same study: - iPhone gamers ripe for ads, says study (Pocket Gamer)

What can you do with one hand?

"What can you do with one hand?", the tag line of fictitious ad campaign for wireless operator Arc Mobile, as seen on the first episode of "Trust Me ", a new TV series about the advertising business.

New iPhone ad posted, new apps featured

Check out Apple's new iPhone ad, showcasing several applications from the App Store. [MacRumors via arstechnica]

Start-Up Raises Money to Send Text Message Ads

More and more people are reading, watching and listening on their cellphones and advertisers want a way to reach them there. A San Mateo, Calif., start-up 4INFO, which just raised $20 million, helps them do that. The New York Times reports.

4INFO provides technology for media organizations — clients also include Yahoo, MySpace and MTV — to reach their audience on their cellphones. It enables readers of USA Today, for example, to send a text message asking to receive sports scores from the paper or to request that the paper send new sports scores as they arrive.

It is also an advertising network selling text message ads and banner ads on the mobile Web sites of the 100 publishers in its network. Brands that have used 4INFO to advertise include Citi, Microsoft and Procter & Gamble.

Read full article.

TMobile Commercial

A new T-mobile advert which was filmed at 11am on Thursday 15th January 2009 at Liverpool Street station, London.

[via Adrants]

Jeremy Piven Offered $1 Million Spokesman Deal From Text Messaging Company

EzTexting.com, a SMS text messaging company, said on Friday that is is offering actor Jeremy Piven $1 million to become its new corporate spokesperson.

Last month, according to OK Magazine, the Entourage star collected a bunch of girls' numbers at Britney Spears' birthday party -- then sent out a mass text saying, "Come to my room - whoever responds first gets me for the night." The, uh, lucky winner is now his new girlfriend, model-turned-waitress Ashley Chandos.

EzTexting.com provides small to medium-sized businesses with a platform to send mass text messages to a target group of contacts.

According to All Your TV, Piven's "booty call" might not be the way that most people would use its service, but the company apparently sees his recent story as a good hook for their service. As the company notes in their press release, "Piven is living proof that a mass text can reach your target audience instantly and provide meaningful results."

A Text Arrives. Oh, It’s Just an ‘Idol’ Ad

Some AT&T Wireless customers have voted an emphatic no on a promotion for “American Idol” that popped up on their phones this week. [via The New York Times]

AT&T, a sponsor of the show, said it sent text messages to a “significant number” of its 75 million customers, urging them to tune in to the season premiere on Tuesday night.

But some recipients thought the message was a breach of cellphone etiquette, and gave it the kind of reaction that the “Idol” judge Simon Cowell might give an off-key crooner.

... Recipients were not charged for the message, and they can opt out of future advertisements by responding with the word “stop.”

Nielsen: Text Marketing on Rise

President-Elect Barack Obama's "V.P. pick" text message remains the most notable example of short-code marketing in the U.S. But according to a new report released by Nielsen's Telecom Practice via AdWeek, Americans should expect to see more text-message marketing in the future.

Given the immense popularity of texting in the U.S. and abroad, it's not surprising that marketers have ramped up their use of the medium to engage their customers -- where there's an audience, marketers are not far behind.

So far, Nielsen's report notes, marketers have used short-code marketing in a tight but creative range of ways: from simple information messaging, to rewards programming, to couponing, and even direct SMS purchasing.

Short codes are also changing the way Americans engage with traditional media. Participation TV falls into this realm -- with American Idol being the most prominent example of viewers engaging with a TV program over text messaging. And radio listeners are also increasingly being called to action via text message.

Google Search Ads Now on iPhone, T-Mobile G1

Several weeks after Google optimized its search results for the iPhone, the search engine giant announced Monday that AdWords clients can now opt to have their ads show up on the results pages of the iPhone and T-Mobile G1.
PCMag reports.

All AdWords advertisers will be able to target their ads to show on iPhone, Android, and any other mobile device with a full HTML Internet browser," said Alexandra Kenin, product marketing manager for the Mobile Ads team.

"Now you have the ability to show desktop ads on mobile phones, as well as mobile ads on mobile phones," she said.

Can You Hear Me Now?

Do you remember the controversy a while back when British shopkeepers started using a "teen repellent" to deter loiterers with an unbearable, piercing sound audible only to those under the age of 20? Well, that technology is back. Only this time it's in the hands of the younguns. Or, at least, it will be if the folks at Fanta are successful with their latest campaign. YPulse reports.

Over in the UK the Coca-Cola owned soft-drink brand is launching a mobile app that uses the same high-pitched frequencies issued by the so-called "Mosquito," only in this application the sounds are supposed to create a teen language with wolf whistles,"pssts," and warnings that are tagged to words or phrases such as "cool," "uncool" and ""let’s get out of here."

Sony Ericsson meets Bond

Sony Ericsson has launched a website to highlight its connection to the latest James Bond movie. Check out the special agents' phones.

[via Adverblog]

Fox News, A&E Television Networks Join Nokia Mobile Ad Networ

Nokia has announced that several large U.S. publishers have joined its mobile advertising network. These additions join other flagship Nokia Media Network publishers such as Reuters, CNET, Agence-France Press, Unidad Editorial, Hearst and AccuWeather; operators like Sprint and Airtel; and Nokia services like Nokia.mobi.

Nokia Interactive Advertising helps brands reach the potential global audience of 3.3 billion consumers with mobile devices.

[via Cellular News]

Mobile phone ads hit by spending curbs

According to the FT, the global economic downturn is set to hit advertising on mobile phones until at least 2010, when marketing agencies expect clients to increase their budgets.

"Advertising agencies say clients are reining in their marketing spending and focusing on proven mediums such as mass audience television and the internet.

The move deals a blow to European mobile operators, who were planning on generating significant new revenue from advertising. "

Nokia adds big names to ad network

Nokia has expanded its mobile advertising network with the addition of some of the biggest publishing names in Europe, including Telegraph Media Group and Five owner RTL Group.¨

Launched in February, the Nokia Media Network already reaches more than 100 million consumers around the world through more than 70 launch publishers, including Discovery, Hearst and Reuters. New partners include Trinity Mirror and Cnet.

[via BrandRepublic]

Anjelica Huston stars in latest Orange Spot ad

The latest Orange commercial, starring Anjelica Huston is set in a dimly lit restauraunt, where Huston pitches a movie to the familiar Orange Film Board executives. Brand Republic reports.

"Huston wants to create a film based on the depression suffered by a funeral director's wife.

However, the Orange executives suggest the movie could be made more upbeat by giving people phones to text their friends funny photos of dead people.

Huston joins plethora of Hollywood stars who have starred the Orange Spot series, including Rob Lowe, Snoop Dogg, Ewan McGregor, Steven Seagal, Darryl Hannah, Carrie Fisher and even Darth Vader.

The ad will run in cinemas across the UK from this week and has been designed to remind people to turn their phones off while in the cinema."

Watch the commercial

iPhone ad rapped as 'misleading'

A television advert for the iPhone misled consumers, UK's Advertising Standards Authority has ruled, reports the BBC.

"Two complaints to the watchdog noted that the advert said "all the parts of the internet are on the iPhone".

But the ASA said because the iPhone did not support Flash or Java - two programs that form part of many webpages - the claim was misleading.

Apple had argued its claim referred to availability of webpages, rather than their specific appearance."

Half Man Statue to Promote Mobile Game

People walk past a half-body statue in Shibuya, Tokyo's main shopping area, on August 22. Online Game Company NHN Japan has set up a series of these statues to promote the mobile game site hange.jp.

When people touch the statue's arm with their mobile phone, the application site will automatically open and a lucky winner will be rewarded 10,000 U.S. Dollars.

[Foreign Policy via Japan Probe]