The wireless industry is hoping to mirror the wireline industry in one aspect: the money-making potential of Internet advertising.
But big questions remain. How will consumers react to advertising on their wireless devices? If they do, on which devices will advertising work most effectively?
Advertising.com, which provides performance-based online advertising, hopes to answer those questions with its recently introduced Wireless Advertising Marketing and Measurement Initiative.
The company said the initiative is designed to identify, test and measure the most-effective advertising methods in the emerging mobile commerce arena by testing six wireless channels: messaging, wireless Internet, location-based advertising, interactive, retail integration and time-sensitive advertising.
“Everybody is talking about how big wireless advertising is going to be, but no one knows how we are going to get there,” said Christopher Doherty, spokesman for Advertising.com. “We want to bring together the wireless providers, carriers and advertisers and test how wireless advertising will work.”
The initiative, set to kick off with a conference this week in New Orleans, will include several companies from the wireless and advertising industry, including Leap Wireless, Unilever, Catalina Marketing and Smartpoint, as well as research firms Greenfield Online and Nielson NetRatings.
The WAMMI initiative will include 12 to 15 tests, ranging from measuring consumer acceptance on various wireless devices, including PCS phones, Internet-ready phones and personal digital assistants, to what types of advertisements work best on each device.
The Wireless Data Forum last week also kicked off its Wireless Audience Measurement Council. In conjunction with the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association and Neilson Ratings, the WAM Council is an attempt to rate wireless audiences in the way television viewers are rated as well as prepare the industry for increased scrutiny by the Federal Trade Commission as advertising on wireless devices becomes more common.
Consumer-protection issues are being raised, such as disclosure and security. “We are minding the store and are concerned with our members’ issues,” said Mark Desautels, president and chief executive officer of the WDF.
Yankee Group analyst Adam Zawel projected a potential of $1.5 billion of advertising revenue available to U.S. carriers by 2005.
While critics of wireless advertising question whether subscribers will want to receive advertising over their wireless devices, Advertising. com noted that just like other media, some consumers are willing to receive advertising and other are not. The company believe that if the consumer is offered a value proposition as to what the benefits are to them, they will accept it.
“No one wants to receive `spam’ messages on their wireless devices, but permission-based advertising might work,” Doherty explained.
Advertising.com said the WAMMI initiative differs from previous studies in that it will not be confined to a single market or form of wireless technology, rather the trial will involve a variety of wireless technologies across multiple geographic markets. Doherty also noted that previous studies involved consumers receiving free wireless devices and airtime to test wireless advertising, practices that could lead to skewed results.
The research from the trial is expected to yield not only a measure of the effectiveness of wireless advertising, but also should provide insights into the target audiences’ behavior and levels of acceptance of wireless advertising.
“One thing we have learned so far is that the click-through rate on PDAs is much higher than with other wireless devices,” Doherty said. “Is this because PDA users are more wireless savvy? We hope the study will provide insight into this sort of behavior.”
The length of each specific test will vary, but Advertising.com said the entire testing period is scheduled to last 12 months. Companies that participate in the initiative will be able to access the information around the clock in real-time, and receive quarterly reports and analysis.
MobileCrier
Advertising.com also launched its MobileCrier service, providing Web masters and business owners a free solution for sending and receiving text messaging to groups of wireless users who share common interests.
The company noted the service is geared to private and public users who have a need for group messaging technology, and also helps manage group communications across the different technology platforms used by wireless carriers.
List owners can be either “private users,” who can use the service to send messages to lists of people with common interests, or “public users,” such as businesses, which can use the service to let their customers know about breaking news of interest to them.
“A majority of people purchasing wireless technology today don’t understand the potential that already exists for communicating in new ways, such as text messaging,” said John Ferber, chief Internet officer and co-founder of Advertising.com. “We developed MobileCrier to let people harness this exciting feature of their wireless device and improve their ability to communicate with large groups, as well as receive information that may be of particular interest to them.”
Advertising.com said the service differs from other group text-messaging services because its allows messages to be sent directly from the Advertising.com Web site instead of over the phone. Also, business owners and Web masters can display a description of their distribution list along with their logo.
The MobileCrier service can be used with any device that accepts text messages, with messages as long as 85 characters and the subject no longer than 15 characters. Advertising.com noted that in order to protect the privacy of its users, it will not sell, rent, exchange or barter any wireless numbers or any other personally identifiable information regarding members.
Senior Writer Antony Bruno contributed to this story.
