SMS 2.0

People are so gung-ho about the Internet and the miniscule revenues it generates -2.5 Billion INR. Mobile on the other hand is having a phenomenal run in terms of their revenues apart from the core activities. VAS is pegged around 20 Billion INR.

There are about 32 Million Handsets in India that are GPRS/WAP enabled. About 1 Billion Page views happen through the mobile sets. The number of SMSes received for the Indian Idol Final is rumored around 40 Million.

But then, why is mobile advertising not taking off in India?

Is it because of TRAI regulation that you cannot push advertising? Or is it because the service providers feel that there are more monies in VAS for which the customer is willing to pay.

I am not aware of any campaign done through Mobile, in India, that has been effective or a case study spoken about in the industry circle.

At the most Mobile advertising has been stuck to things like Shortcode, SMS (taken from some unrelated database)… and yeah, couple of banner ads on Airtel Live.

I also read an article which mentioned that the mobile advertising will overtake internet advertising in India by 2010. Hmm, I guess not.

My reasons:-

The Mobile service providers are now concentrating on the rural markets – which mean basic telephones, and basic services. Hence the usage and number of connections might increase, but the ARPU will decrease.

Well, main reason is that the people mindset. For me Mobile is very personal, almost like a part of me. I hate when I get SMSs from some stupid marketer offering something I do not want, In fact most of the time I feel angry..

But when on the Internet, I know for sure, that most of the things I access are for free… hence I do not mind a few ads, here and there, as long as the purpose of my browsing is served.

I mean, I know that my Gmail or Hotmail are free services, and as long as I am not paying for it… I have no complaints (to be more honest – I CANNOT complain) on the ads that are served in my inbox.
But when it comes to Mobile – I am paying for each and every service they offer… and hence any thing that I feel intrusive, I would react strongly.

Tip: I guess if the service provider comes out with a program, wherein I can send free SMS upto 75 Characters, and the remaining stuff is used for Advertising… then there would be a line of advertisers wanting to fill in the remaining 75 odd characters … to make it more interesting the program should read the text and place contextual ads…

Say for example, I send a SMS to my friend – Shall we meet up for Lunch? I am at MG Rd 2day aftrn.

A Pizza Hut or some other Restaurant can advertise on the remaining space – Drop in at Pizza Hut, MG Rd, show this msg and get 10% off.


I guess until the mobile service providers and the mobile aggregators come up with something out of the box solutions to reach out in a non-intrusive way to the mobile users… Proper advertising would not be possible on the Mobile… except in terms of paid VAS

Cheers

Santosh

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