Optism™

In this week’s roundup we have several articles zeroing in on the state of mobile marketing in emerging economies and others suggesting we’re in for a good year!

To start, Memeburn and Dr. K.F. Lai tell us that the BRICS countries — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa represent “the next great wave for both mobile telecommunications and marketing.” Lai predicts that mobile marketing will continue to grow in these countries with mobile becoming an essential part of the marketing mix. “The era of experimentation in mobile is over. It will be critical for brands to ensure that mobile is fully integrated into their businesses”.

Lai goes on to provide some observations on how mobile is developing in the BRICS countries and which trends he expects to dominate. He notes that while the number of smart phone users will increase on a global level, many consumers in developing countries will be very price-sensitive and continue to use more affordable phones with minimal features for many years to come.

Our friends at mSearchGroove have provided excellent food for thought in Matt Anderson’s article “Mobile Operators Can Learn From India To Promote Innovation, Rethink Revenue Models.” According to Matt, Indian mobile operators should make a few changes if they want to take full advantage of mobile marketing opportunities. For starters, he suggests that they embrace the “value added services” paradigm that functions throughout Southeast Asia. “People find a way to collectively make a sale and split the proceeds.” He notes, “Indian mobile operators need to learn to do the same to drive innovation.”

In an increasingly competitive environment, Matt suggests, operators need to differentiate themselves by offering more relevant ad content through personalization and to get personalized ads to consumers quickly. They also need to cater to devices other than smart phones. Finally, they need to embrace the idea of sharing revenues.

A recent article in Arabian business.com reports “MidEast mobile phone advertising surges by more than 50%.” According to research by InMobi, mobile ad impressions in the Middle East grew 51% to 752 million monthly impressions between July 2010 and October 2010. If this growth continues, monthly impressions could grow to 1 billion in a few months. InMobi’s James Lamberti said, “The region represents a very interesting ecosystem with a young, mobile dedicated population driving mobile media consumption and an emerging developer community eyeing globalization.” Optism has a strong presence in the Middle East through its partnership with Etisalat in the UAE and Mobinil in Egypt. In this burgeoning market, it’s critical that advertisers and brands “get it right” and Optism and its partners believe permission and preference based advertising is the the best way forward.

In some parts of the world, however, mobile decision-makers are putting a lot of emphasis on mobile advertising on data-capable devices. The Creative Department tells us “C-level executives [are] optimistic about mobile advertising prospects.” Citing a recent survey from Chetan Sharma Consulting, the article reports, “A poll of 225 mobile decision-makers revealed 40 percent believe spending on mobile advertising will increase 100 percent in 2011. About the same amount of respondents said spending will increase 200 percent. Only 5 percent believed it will remain flat.” The research found that “55 percent of respondents believe Google and its Android mobile operating system will grab most of the headlines. The deployment of 4G deployments and the growth of data consumption around the world were each cited by about 40 percent of respondents.

eMarketer has some good news for early adopters of mobile advertising. Based on research from Briabe Media and MocoSpace, more than a third of ad recipients remember receiving mobile ads. In “Who Recalls the Most Mobile Ads?” the author analyzes the demographics of those who remembered mobile ads. It turns out there was little difference between men and women, with 37% of women reporting that they remembered ads to 36% of men. Age also didn’t change the response rate much. The author notes that an earlier survey conducted for the Mobile Marketing Association has even more encouraging results. It found that “Among those who recalled mobile ads, 39% had taken some kind of action, and 43% of those who interacted with an ad ended up making a purchase.”

We’ll close out with a latest article from telecoms.com that warns Operators ignore SMS at their peril. According to the latest forecasts from Informa Telecoms and Media, global SMS revenues will rise to U.S. $136.9 B by 2015 from U.S. $105.5 B in 2010, “as global SMS traffic increases from five trillion messages in 2010 to 8.7 trillion messages in 2015. The article goes on to advise, “SMS should not be overlooked as a core service for mobile users, delivering in 2010, 80 per cent of data and messaging revenues.”

The article quotes Pamela Clark-Dickson at Informa who believes, “SMS will continue to be the most popular form of messaging for some time due to its low cost, universal access and interoperability across devices and mobile networks.” SMS will continue to be the most common type of messaging for some time. And consumers aren’t the only ones using SMS. Brands, retailers, government departments, financial institutions, health clinics and transport providers are all realizing the benefits of SMS for sophisticated and innovative purposes.

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