• by September 13, 2000

By Masha Geller

Wireless advertising is a hot topic these days. It's discussed at every conference by reputable industry pundits, but no one seems to be able to convince anyone else that wireless advertising is a valid ad medium. For example, in today's edition of ClickZ, columnist Sean Carton laments his unsuccessful quest of finding a single example of a successful wireless advertising campaign recently. In the column, titled "No News Is Bad News for the Wireless Ad Industry," he writes that even though there are companies like Vindigo and AvantGo that have done some work with sponsoring parts of their systems, "no one has done anything of any size" when it comes to wireless "advertising." Why? Because it won't work," he says.

Sourcing Jakob Nielsen, Catron writes, "Given the screen size of current phones, the intrusiveness of dealing with incoming messages, and the way that people seem to want to use wireless, it seems to me that "advertising" as we know it just isn't going to work in a wireless format.

Of course there are two sides to every story and Engage UK, for one, begs to differ.

Quios, Inc., the leading mobile Internet company, and Engage UK, a division of Engage, Inc. today released a joint study highlighting consumer's acceptance of wireless text advertising as part of relevant, personalized, time-sensitive content. The study revealed a positive response rate among 79% of participants and an average 60% recall rate of the trial's three participating big brand sponsors.

Quios and Engage expect the findings to boost confidence among advertisers still uncertain of the potential of the wireless medium to deliver return on investment (ROI).

According to the official announcement, the Quios/Engage study "confirms that wireless advertising, especially short message service (SMS) advertisements, are an excellent channel for consumer advertisers to reach a large, affluent and highly desirable demographic through wireless devices."

The study, which originated in the UK, examined results from Quios' Euro 2000 SMS Alert service, offered to its members in June 2000. The service, which centered around the Euro 2000 Football Tournament, proved tremendously successful with over 2.5 million message alerts, delivered to over 30,000 cell phones, in over 100 countries. Sega Dreamcast, Grolsch Beer and Sports.com sponsored the message alerts.

Quios and Engage hired a third-party research firm, Harvey Research, to survey 500 mobile phone users who had signed-up with Quios to receive real-time notification each time a goal was scored, as well as the final match scores of their favorite teams during the tournament.

"The trial results support our belief that SMS advertising is a highly effective means of reaching wireless consumers today. At Quios, each message we send includes an SMS ad - "visit www.quios.com" - that has played a critical role in Quios' membership growth topping over one million members," said Marc Va