• by Seana Mulcahy , September 9, 2004

Greetings. I'm back from the long weekend. I hope you had a good one. It does seem as if it were a long time ago though. I don't know about you, but this past week seemed to kick into high speed for me. A lot seems to be happening. The fall is upon us and conferences are popping up all over the place.

You know it's funny; I've been completely turned off by my laptop lately. I mean sure, I am somewhat chained to it on a day-to-day basis. It seems I am always running back to my desk to check my e-mail, meeting schedules, and the like. The weird thing is I feel as if I am rarely sitting in front of it for any long period of time.

I recently got organized and have just about everything on my mobile phone. I e-mail, IM, book meetings, send text messages, and of course talk. I feel a bit spoiled having this tiny device slip into my pocket. I'm also a bit guilty. You know the scenario, you are at dinner with someone, your phone is on vibrate, and you see that you have a text message. What do you do? Well you probably do what I do and try to discreetly read the message and respond back. Oops.

Guilty or not, a text message is much more exciting than getting an e-mail. It has priority to me. To date, very few have been given my number in order to send me a message. It certainly makes me nervous. I already get crazy telemarketers on my landline. I always get spam via e-mail. The last thing I want is SMS spam.

That aside, SMS isn't sexy, but it is cool. Its history is a bit surprising too. Originally in the early 1990s SMS was used by engineers to communicate with each other. It didn't take long for these folks to realize that text messages were an efficient way to communicate with consumers.

In 1999, content providers and users were able to send text messages across most provider networks. Consumers could send messages to just about anyone with a mobile phone.

The technology's inception was in 2002. Since then 30 billion text messages have been sent. By the following year, users were sending approximately 1 billion messages per day. By 2006, Western Europe is said to total that number of messages.

How can we, as advertisers, take advantage of this adoption curve without ticking off users? I think we'd all agree that no one wants an unsolicited message. Therefore, clear opt-in options must be readily available. And like anything else, clear opt-out options must be accessible. We also need to be sensitive to air time. Many of these users do not get free incoming calls. I don't think anyone would want to receive a message if they had to pay for it.

I learned of a pretty cool company called Interspot (www.interspot.com) that has a product called InterSMS. The technology allows you to use your computer to send an SMS message to another phone. I'm not sure if you've seen them, but they have ads that you can click on to receive coupons via your mobile phone. For instance, the ad might be for a clothing company. You see the banner while surfing on your favorite site and click on it. A piece of code is sent to your mobile phone in the form of a SMS message. Later when you are in the store, you can pull up the SMS message; the cashier can scan it (as they do UPC codes) and give you a discount. Pretty cool. Recently I read an article where it was suggested that texting could boost TV ratings. I think we have seen this with "American Idol." Viewers are invited (constantly) to phone in or text who their favorite singer is. Currently, 65 percent of the interactions between mobile phones and TVs entail voting during these types of programs.

McKinsey just did a study that showed about 58 percent of advertisers said they would allocate a larger portion of their ad budgets to channels with attractive ratings growth resulting from the use of SMS. In addition, 46 percent of those advertisers would bring new money to TV, either by reallocating the money from other media or simply by making new investments. Studies also show that SMS interactivity can encourage ratings growth of 50 to 100 percent for niche cable and satellite channels. Advertising provides 20 percent of the revenues of the average thematic pay broadcaster, which can reasonably expect one out of every five shows to be interactive. SMS interactivity can therefore boost the total revenues of a niche pay-TV broadcaster by 1.5 to 2.5 percent.

So what do think about this? Certainly European and Asian markets are ahead of us on this. Do you think Americans' media consumption and behavior fall into these findings? If so, would you create a program combining devices and broadcast? You may have already. Post your thoughts on the SPIN board.