O2 More, the operator’s opt-in ad messaging service, has more than doubled its number of users over the last month, mobileSQUARED has discovered. Although the operator is believed to have experienced a drop in subscribers at some point during the year, it is now thought to have between 50,000-100,000 users. A timely recovery in time for the launch of its proximity marketing service, which is expected to launch in August.
That puts O2 in hot pursuit of Orange Shots, which told mobileSQUARED that it has “well over” the 100,000 subscribers it announced when the service launched earlier this year. Without divulging actual numbers, clearly Orange has experienced growth, though perhaps not the spectacular increase it envisaged when it took over the Blyk platform in the UK.
mobileSQUARED puts this slower-than-expected growth in permission-based advertising on mobile down to consumer education. After all, mobile advertising in all of its various guises is only at the nascent stage of its development. And the process of consumer education is at an even earlier stage of its evolution.
Consumers nevertheless remain a pivotal role in the uptake and success of mobile advertising. Until the consumer is placed truly in the middle of the mobile advertising ecosystem, and not at one end of the value chain ‑ as is the case in virtually all models at present ‑ the consumer will not embrace the medium as quickly as the industry anticipates.
Messaging is certainly primed to play a massive role in mobile advertising. For instance, UK mobile subs send over 11 million SMSes per hour, amounting to 7.7 billion SMSes per month. Alternatively, that represents up to 15.4 billion engagements with the SMS medium every month (i.e. send and receive). And for this reason alone, mobileSQUARED is confident permission-based advertising will be a significant force in the mobile advertising itinerary within 12-18 months. (See our report for SinglePoint on Conversational Advertising).
In June, speaking at the IAB’s Engage for Mobile event, Dean Merrion, head of O2 More at O2 Media, claimed that 67% of O2 customers are likely to engage with a mobile offer. That equates to 14.34 million subscribers out of its 21.4 million total users. If Orange, Vodafone, 3 and T-Mobile’s customers all think along similar lines, then almost 70% of the UK market will embrace mobile advertising, and coupon-based messaging services in particular. Provided operators get the messaging spot on, there are big numbers out there.
nick@mobilesquared.co.uk
NB. We did originally run the story with a different angle. We’re about number crunching and data. So we changed it.