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Will Europeans Respond To MMS Marketing?

Will Europeans Respond To MMS Marketing?

Multimedia messaging (MMS) to mobile telephones is seen by the telecoms industry as a much-needed revenue elixir that will help ease their current financial woes (see MMS Study Brings Little Cheer To Operators). However, research shows that consumers may not be so readily won over.

MMS is capable of delivering audio and visual information to customers’ mobiles, potentially enriching the marketing information offered by advertisers. “Multimedia messaging provides advertisers with the rich media tool kit short messaging service (SMS) lacks, enabling images, animation, better-quality sound, and more extensive copy,” says a recent Jupiter Research report.

Unfortunately for advertisers, it looks like it may be a bit of an uphill struggle to engage with consumers, as Jupiter’s survey also shows that 46% of 35-44 year old mobile users do not believe that any types of MMS marketing will grab their attention. This figure drops to 24% in the 15-24 age group, suggesting that there is more hope with market, at least initially.

Of most concern to users of mobile marketing is, as usual, relevance. They are less impressed with animations and audio and more interested that the ads be informative, according to Jupiter’s MMS Advertising: Adopt Tactics As Consumer Behaviour Evolves report.

Currently, awareness of MMS advertising is low across Europe, with less than 7% of the population with MMS devices and only 2% actively using them. However, Jupiter forecasts that by 2007, 31% will have MMS-enabled devices and 21% will be active users of the platform.

Share Of European Population Actively Using MMS & SMS 
             
  2002  2003  2004  2005  2006  2007 
SMS device owners 61 71 73 74 75 75
Active SMS users 43 46 49 50 51 51
MMS device owners 1 7 17 24 28 31
Active MMS users 0 2 7 11 16 21
Source: Jupiter Research, January 2003 

“Early MMS marketers in the entertainment and consumer packaged goods industries should act on their target audience’s desire for richer ad creative. Initially, branding campaigns involving screen savers, high-resolution images, animated greetings, and polyphonic audio, for example, will likely do well with targeted youths,” says the report.

Jupiter says that MMS will not be a mass-reach vehicle any time soon and that marketers should continue to rely on SMS in the mid-term in order to achieve the most competitive cost.

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