A month ago we were tearing our hair out trying to find exactly this service.
We’re still intersted, please drop us a line.

Your posting took the words right out of my mouth. For a long time I have been wondering why I don’t see short codes on print ads in magazines and Newspapers. I think the first reason is getting the advertiser to understand the technology. Only the big companies use agencies for their ads, the bulk of the market is the small business putting an ad in their local newspaper.

The other issue is the cost, as Reno has pointed out. This is exactly the reason we are launching Mobivity. Any business should be able to do a short term mobile campaign without laying out thousands of dollars and waiting 6 weeks.

They should be able to grab a keyword, put it on an ad and be up and running instantly.

Jonathan…you are absolutely right on many counts. Customer paid advertising will not fly. Premium content is viable, but not our focus and not applicable to all advertisers. Fortunately, the winds are changing rapidly…finally…in the US. Advertisers are willing to spend for OTAir type services. Though it is inexpensive, we find ways to reduce the cost burden for advertisers with message sponsorships or supplementing revenue by offering related services to the mobile user via text when requesting info on an item. For instance, texting a book ISBN to get price info and then buying that book through an online link with a referral kickback coming to us.

Advertising in the U.S. is increasingly in a state of turmoil…not advertiser and ad agency will admit that, but content snacking, time-shifting and place-shifting of content, fragmentation of media, the TiVo effect and more are having an impact that marketers are trying to figure out how deal with. While mobile, and specifically text, is not THE answer…it is a great solution and our list of partners and clients realizing that and hopping on board is rapidly growing as a result. If it’s going to fly anywhere, it’s gotta be the advertising capital of the world.

We had absolutely no response from anyone, and those advertising agencies we spoke to were not interested in the slightest. *No-one* wanted it.

We can still provide everything as above, but we don’t market it or promote the service anywhere anymore – it became a waste of our time and money trying to get people interested in something we saw as so blindingly obvious.

Although I guess now that more advertisers are starting to take notice of this sort of thing, we should start promoting our service a little more…

Fortunately, companies such as OTAir (I will selfishly withhold the names of the others, though you can easily find them) are launching now that the U.S. market is finally ripe to solve the numerous problems that Reno details. We’ve been through the startup costs, the carrier approvals, the long wait and the system development and now we at OTAir can “divy up” our short code across many advertisers using keywords. This means we can have a mobile campaign up and running within one business day and at a very low cost vs. the advertiser going it on their own. Not to mention, advertisers get the advantages of our constant and rapid new functionality development without having to pay for that giving them a flexible, but solid environment from which to run their campaign. So, now companies big and small have no excuse to pursue what Russell says they should be doing – for examples of what some are doing with keywords, visit http://www.otair.com/index.cfm?action=shortCodes.

ceo

Here are the main SMS marketing problems in a nutshell for agencies, brands and others

1. Cost.
– shortcode cost ($500-$1000/month)
– messaging costs (~10 cents per message)
– mobile marketing application licensing cost ($2,500 and up per month)
– creative services cost (how deep are your pockets!)
2. Time.
– 2 months to provision shortcode with carrriers (while you pay CSCA/Neustar
$500-$1000 per month for 2 months for an inactive short code-model needs
fixing)
– Select aggregator and get account sign-up OR
– Select Mobile Marketing partner with aggregation component
– Design creative services and mobile marketing campaign
3. Difficulty
– The process can be confusing for many brands, media and other marketers
and this requires education by the mobile marketing companies. This also
leads to longer sales cycles and increases cost of revenue. (See Costs)
– Some systems are not as flexible, rapid or difficult to change at different phases
of the campaign
4. Campaign Types
– Short-term or fixed term. Most campaigns are event-driven and shorter term.
– Set-up time can exceed campaign duration (See Time)
5. Lack of Creativity
– Many do the same type of campaigns. Voting, polling, quiz, trivia, etc.
– There are so many new and clever ways beyond this to allow marketers
and advertisers to gain traction.
– New mobile social applications are an example of creative ‘maven’ type
campaigns
6. Revenue Share
– Premium SMS. Carriers take nearly 50% of PSMS revenue.
– Mobile Marketing companies also take a slice (~25%)
– ~25% left over for the content companies who look to mobile channel
as new revenue stream
– Most advertisers see this as a marketing expense so rev share is lesser concern

Summary:

Only large brands and bigger companies can afford to run these SMS campaigns as the barriers are time, money, and ease of set-up and design. These barriers would have to be reduced in order to gain wider adoption. CSCA/Neustar need to fix their model (e.g. a client would have to pay for 3 months shortcode even if campaign length is 1 month).

Cheers,
Reno