Mobile Advertising Still Underutilized

Americans use their cell phones for 48 minutes per day on average, yet mobile advertising accounts for only $40 million in revenue per year, according to the Yankee Group. Television advertising, on the other hand, represents $68 billion in revenue per year while Americans watch the boob tube 3 hours and 42 minutes per day on average. Newspaper advertising is even more out of whack as newspapers generate $47 billion in annual revenue compared to just 42 minutes of time spent per day.

There’s obviously an imbalance going on here! Add to the fact that 70% of all mobile promotional text messages are opened and read, and the imbalance is even more egregious!

Eventually, some leveling of the playing field will occur. Advertisers simply cannot ignore the amount of time that Americans spend with their cell phones. After all, it’s not that Americans aren’t willing to consider mobile advertising. Quite the contrary. The Yankee Group study showed that 1/3 of all Americans age 18-35 are interested in receiving advertised content on a cell phone.

Consumer product companies are anxious to get involved with mobile advertising, but appear to be slow to be pulling the trigger, perhaps over concern of advertising being considered Spam. Mobile advertising requires that a previously existing relationship, or opt-in, be established prior to an advertiser reaching a prospect via cell phone.

“We are meeting with lots of advertising agencies and they are all interested in creating mobile advertising campaigns for their clients,” said Bob Bentz, of Advanced Telecom Services. “In general, however, we are still in an education process when it comes to advertising agencies using mobile advertising.”

It is forward thinking companies and advertising agencies that will be able to look outside the box and get involved with text message mobile content companies in the United States. At present, advertising to the cell phone is clearly the most underutilized medium in the country.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 25th, 2006 at 11:15 pm and is filed under Mobile Marketing, Text Message Advertising, Text Messaging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.