A new report from the Nielsen Company reveals that the average mobile subscriber in the US sent and received more SMS text messages than mobile telephone calls during Q2 2008.
This is the second consecutive quarter in which the average number of text messages was significantly higher than the average number of calls, according to the report.
However, Nielsen found that the two types of mobile communication are not always directly comparable, as users typically convey more information in a voice call than in a text message, meaning they often send multiple messages when having a “text conversation”.
“The issue with text is that it occupies a middle ground,” said John du Pre Gaunt, senior analyst at eMarketer. “It’s as instantaneous as a phone call and is directly connected to the person, unlike email, which can sit until the person fires up their PC and checks it – or has it pushed to their phone, which means it is acting like a text anyway.”
Gaunt commented that communication by text was close to having a conversation and said that marketers could embed links to pop text sessions into other media, such as click-to-map or click-to-call.
“The biggest mistake for marketers is to confuse texting by users over age 35 with asynchronous email,” he said.
eMarketer also predicted that revenues from all ad-supported messaging in North America will approach $4 billion by 2011.
GfK published its Mobile Advertising Report (MAR) in August, which found that a high percentage of mobile phone users in the UK, US and India received advertising messages through their mobile phones (see High Percentage Of Mobile Users Receiving Advertising Messages).
According to the report, text messaging remains the most common advertising format in all three countries.
The Mobile Data Association released figures recently showing that the UK experienced a 30% year on year increase in the number of text messages sent in Q2.
According to the research by MDA, 1.4 billion text messages are sent each week and around 6.4 billion text messages are sent each month in the UK (see 1.4bn Text Messages Sent Each Week In The UK).
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