• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, October 4, 2006

Mobile text ads haven't quite caught on in the United States yet. The response rate to text ads by U.S. mobile subscribers was only 7 percent in August compared to rates as high as 29.1 percent in Europe, according to new research by mobile measurement firm M:Metrics.

The lagging U.S. response rate partly reflects that text ads are far less common here than in Europe, where subscribers are more accustomed to getting them. Almost 67 percent of mobile subscribers in Spain, for instance, reported receiving an SMS ad in August--compared to only 12.8 percent in the United States.

"It's still a novel concept for people in the U.S.," said Will Hodgman, CEO of M:Metrics, of mobile ads that invite consumers to use short codes--typically 5-digit phone numbers--to respond to promotions.

Because text messaging is more widespread in Europe than in the U.S., marketers there have also been quicker to embrace mobile ads. "Europeans have been more progressive in using text-messaging as an advertising medium than in the U.S.," noted Hodgman.

And while contests for game or reality TV shows drew the biggest responses from mobile users in Europe, content downloads were the main reason that U.S. subscribers responded to mobile ads.

Still, even the U.S. response rate of 7 percent is far higher than for many types of interactive ads. Hodgman likened the high response rates to mobile text ads to those of e-mail in the Internet's early days, before the explosion of spam. And as most commercial e-mail messages then were sent by Internet service providers, so now most text ads are sent by mobile operators promoting their services.

With 38 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers now sending text messages, Hodgman expects the ad response rate here to climb closer to European over time. He cited mobile promotions related to hit shows such as "American Idol" and "Deal or No Deal" as examples of text-messaging campaigns that will become more prevalent in the U.S. market. "From the brand marketers' standpoint, broadcast and media companies have taken the most advantage of this type of advertising," he said.