• by Steve Smith , Staff Writer @popeyesm, August 16, 2011

Mobile video finally is getting traction among users. In a recent Ipsos/Yahoo survey in the last year, video use just across the mobile Web was up by a third. As mobile users come to expect fatter pipes, they don't balk at the sight of a video play button on their phones. Under most 3G networks, buffer lag and consistency of experience are improving to the point where streaming media is a viable medium. But in most cases involving video, marketers either have to rely on the traditional pre-roll messaging, a branded video effort that pulls people in, or perhaps an SMS push that links to a video.

One alternative that gets too little coverage and attention in the U.S. especially is MMS, Multimedia Messaging Service. This platform works via the SMS channel in pretty much the same way. Unlike the other forms of mobile video advertising, MMS can send a video clip (generally of a very small size) to an SMS inbox for viewing with the phone's native player. This gives MMS a potential reach far beyond the 35% of the U.S. Market comprised by cell phones. Many feature phones actually do have multimedia playback capabilities, and of course almost all modern phones receive text. And the beauty of MMS is that it shares SMS's greatest strength as a marketing tool - it is the message no one ignores and usually reads in minutes of receiving.

When it is implemented well, MMS arrives in a user's messaging inbox as a thumbnail that kicks in a video without going to the Web or any other irritating handoff. It is just video delivered to the phone.

MMS has been a platform in the process of becoming more frequently used because it took a long while to get the kind of MMS compatibility across mobile operator networks that was achieved long ago with SMS. In large part those problems have been solved. According to one of the leading providers of MMS, Mogreet, across its network in the second quarter of 2011, 44.2% of mobile video messages went across the Verizon Wireless Network, 37.1% were on AT&T, 7.1% on T-Mobile, 5.7% on Sprint. The iPhone was the single device most used to see these messages, 7.4% of all traffic, followed by the LG enV with 3.9%

For an example of MMS in action try signing up for MMS alerts from CBS News affiliate in Atlanta, WGCL. Simply text NEWS or WEATHER to 21534 and you get a welcome message from one of their anchors. You can always use the universal STOP reply to end the subscription, but even the welcome message gives you a good idea of the potential for this medium.

Because they use the messaging channel rather than the standard data channel (making them accessible to users without data plans) the videos tend to be quite short and in low-res. But it is remarkable to me that more advertisers aren't experimenting with this format. Like any mobile messaging deployment, care needs to be taken about overwhelming the subscriber with content. Users punish the absence of value on this channel ruthlessly. But the challenge here is for marketers to deliver video with value. Consider how this channel could be used for cooking or beauty tips, a ten second video financial markets update, a joke. Portio Research estimates that 249 billion MMS messages will be sent worldwide in 2011, but that is still dwarfed by 6.9 trillion (yes "trillion") SMS messages that will be sent.

From a content programming and marketing perspective, MMS is a video platform that is just waiting for cool ideas and for some smart brands to own that channel with their customers.