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Mobile Marketing can refer to one of two categories of Marketing . First, and relatively new, is meant to describe marketing on or with a mobile device, such as a Mobile Phone . Second, and a more traditional definition, is meant to describe marketing in a moving fashion - for example - technology road shows or moving billboards. Marketing on a mobile phone has become increasingly popular ever since the rise of SMS (Short Message Service) in the early 2000s in Europe and some parts of Asia when businesses started to collect mobile phone numbers and send off wanted (or unwanted) content. Over the past few years SMS has become a legitimate advertising channel. This is due to the fact that unlike email over the public internet, the carrier who police their own networks have set guidelines and best practices for the mobile media industry (including mobile advertising). The IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) and the MMA (Mobile Marketing Association), as well, has established guidelines and evangelizing the use of the mobile channel for marketers. Mobile Marketing via SMS has expanded rapidly in Europe and Asia as a new channel to reach the consumer. SMS initially received negative media coverage in many parts of Europe for being a new form of spam as some advertisers purchased lists and sent unsolicited content to consumer's phones; however, as guidelines are put in place by the mobile operators, SMS has become the most popular branch of the Mobile Marketing industry with several 100 million advertising SMS sent out every month in Europe alone. In North America the first cross-carrier SMS shortcode campaign was run by Labatt Brewing Company in 2002. Over the past few years mobile short codes have been increasingly popular as a new channel to communicate to the mobile consumer. Brands have begun to treat the mobile shortcode as a mobile domain name allowing the consumer to text message the brand at an event, in store and off any traditional media. SMS services typically run off a short code, but sending text messages to an email address is another methodology. Short codes are 5 or 6 digit numbers that have been assigned by all the mobile operators in a given country for the use of brand campaign and other consumer services. The mobile operators vet every application before provisioning and monitor the service to make sure it does not diverge from its original service description. One key criterion for provisioning is that the consumer opts in to the service. The mobile operators demand a double opt in from the consumer and the ability for the consumer to opt out of the service at any time by sending the word STOP via SMS. These guidelines are established in the MMA Consumer Best Practices Guidelines which are followed by all mobile marketers in the United States. The guidelines can be accessed at www.mmaglobal.com Such is the emergence of this form of advertising, that there is now a dedicated global awards ceremony organised every year by Visiongain . MOBILE MARKETING VIA MMS Brands are delivering promotional content such as mobile music to mobile games to drive consumer engagement. This mobile content is delivered via MMS (Multimedia Message Service). Brands are also leveraging consumer generated content. A good example of this is Motorola's ongoing campaigns at House Of Blues venues where the brand allows the consumer to send their mobile photos to the LED board in real-time as well as blog their images online. MOBILE WEB MARKETING Advertising on web pages specifically meant for access by mobile devices is also an option. The MMA (Mobile Marketing Association) provides a set of guidelines and standards that give the recommended format of ads, presentation, and metrics used in reporting. Google, Yahoo, and other major mobile content providers have been selling advertising placement on their properties for years already as of the time of this writing. Advertising Networks focused on mobile properties and advertisers are also available. MOBILE MARKETING VIA BLUETOOTH The rise of Bluetooth started around 2003 and a few companies in Europe have started establishing successful businesses. Most of these businesses offer "Hotspot-Systems" which consist of some kind of content-management system with a Bluetooth distribution function. This technology has the advantages that it is permission-based, has higher transfer speeds and is also a radio-based technology and can therefore not be billed (i.e. is free of charge). MOBILE MARKETING VIA INFRARED Infrared is the oldest and most limited form of Mobile Marketing. Some European companies have experimented with "shopping window marketing" via free Infrared waves in the late 90s. However, Infrared has a very limited range (~ approx. 10cm - 1meter) and could never really establish itself as a leading Mobile Marketing technology. LOCATION BASED SERVICES Location-based Services (LBS) are offered by some cell phone networks as a way to send custom advertising and other information to cell-phone subscribers based on their current location. The cell-phone service provider gets the location from a GPS chip built into the phone, or using radiolocation and trilateration based on the signal-strength of the closest cell-phone towers (for phones without GPS features). In the UK, networks do not use trilateration; LBS services use a single base station, with a 'radius' of inaccuracy, to determine a phone's location. Meantime, LBS can be enabled without GPS tracking technique. Mobile WiMAX technology is utilized to give a new dimension to mobile marketing. The new type of mobile marketing is envisioned between a BS(Base Station) and a multitude of CPE(Consumer Premise Equipment) mounted on vehicle dashtops. Whenever vehicles come within the effective range of the BS, the dashtop CPE with LCD touchscreen loads up a set of icons or banners of individually different shapes that can only be activated by finger touches or voice tags. On the screen, a user has a frame of 5 to 7 icons or banners to choose from, and the frame rotates one after another. This mobile WiMAX-compliant LBS is privacy-friendly and user-centric, when compared with GPS-enabled LBS. USER CONTROLLED MEDIA Mobile marketing differs from most other forms of marketing communication in that it is often user (consumer) initiated, called Mobile Originated (or MO) message, and requires the express consent of the consumer to receive future communications. A call delivered from a server (business) to a user (consumer) is similarly called a Mobile Terminated (or MT) message. This infrastructure points to a trend set by mobile marketing of consumer controlled marketing communications. See also Push-Pull Strategy and Smartreply on the nature of mobile marketing in practice by business. Due to the demands for more user controlled media, mobile messaging infrastructure providers have responded by developing architectures that offer applications to operators with more freedom for the users, as opposed to the network-controlled media. Along with these advances to user-controlled Mobile Messaging 2.0 , blog events throughout the world have been implemented in order to launch popularity in the latest advances in mobile technology. In June of 2007, Airwide Solutions became the official sponsor for the Mobile Messaging 2.0 blog that provides the opinions of many through the discussion of mobility with freedom. Airwide Backs Messaging Blog Mobile Marketing Magazine. May 23, 2007 FUTURE OF MOBILE MARKETING According to a survey conducted by a mobile marketing provider, approximately 89% of major brands are planning to market their products through text and multimedia mobile messaging by 2008. One-third are planning to spend about 10% of marketing budgets through mobile marketing. "89% of Major Brands Planning to Market via Mobile Phones by 2008" MMA, February 27, 2007 Also, in about 5 years over half of brands are expected to spend between 5% and 25% of their total marketing budget on their mobile marketing. Already, 40% of the firms that responded have implemented this feature for their audiences. What will and already has given mobile marketing's attraction are: the ability to reach a specific target audience; information about how the user responded to a marketing message; and proof that a message has been received by the user's handset. "89% of Major Brands Planning to Market via Mobile Phones by 2008" MMA, February 27, 2007 REFERENCES
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