Premium rate SMS (PSMS) is the term that describes the charging of a premium to consumers, for a text message that is either sent or received by their mobile phone.
On Flytext website, Thomas Schuster answers a lot of questions concerning Premium Rate SMS. It's a very interesting contribute that helps understanding how to run a wireless campaign.

Recently the Flytext mobile campaign Movie Rewind has been featured in a case study presented on Revolution Magazine. Movie Rewind targeted an audience aged 16-35 with competitions linked to films such as Lethal Weapon, Dirty Harry, The Rock, City of Angels and Erin Brockovich.

Online personals are getting a bigger and bigger business. There is an intense competition between online dating services with Yahoo! and Match.com leading the leading the advertising challenge in the sector. Today on IAR Ryan Naraine pictures a precise state of the art of the market, trying to answer a curious question:

As in offline life, I would answer: money can't buy real love�

Last year in Western Europe, SMS generated $15 billion in revenue. It's not difficult to imagine that US carriers are trying to import the SMS fashion in North America as well.
Peter Svensson reports on Mercury News about the American mobile market fears and hopes.
It's worked in Europe and Asia -- why not here?

Last week Google has launched Google Toolbar 2.0. It presents some new features like a pop-up blocker, and a Blog-this button that will work for Blogger users.
The announced problem with the pop-up blocker is that it blocks every kind of pop-ups, not just the advertising ones. Furthermore it will not be able to stop Gator advertising.
The polemics on the new Toolbar go further if we look at the blog-this feature that has raised a lot of concern between blogging services and technology providers in competition with Blogger.
I really look forward to test it, however I will have to wait until Monday, when I get back to work. The new toolbar in fact doesn't work on Mac. Like many other people, I'm a big Google fan, however I have been really disappointed by the lack of consideration for Mac users�

MarketingFix, the daily blog for everyone interested in online marketing issues, has just been bought by ClickZ co-founder Andy Bourland.
Good luck to Rick and the other guys involved in the project!

Clickthrough rates increased by 60% since the fourth quarter of 2002, according to a new study by NetCreations.
The study showed clickthrough rates for the current quarter to be at an average of 5.1%. This compares with 4.4% for the first quarter of 2003 and 3.2% for the fourth quarter of 2002.
More information about the research and some tips to optimize an email marketing campaign can be found on Direct.

iMediaConnection presents in its Creative Spotlight a brief case study of the recent MINI rich media campaign.
With the use of rich media, MINI and its agency WCRS engaged the consumer and creatively delivered the attributes of the Cooper all within smaller ad units.

Masha Geller talked yesterday on MediaPost about "intro-mercials". I do agree with her, that watching a 10 sec ads it's a fair price to pay to read content for free, however I don't believe this isn't an intrusive form of advertising.

Keeping on talking about intro-mercials, CNET Networks today announced the debut of the first "intromercial" advertising unit on the front door of its award-winning CNET News.com Web site. Sun Microsystems will be using the new ad unit to reinforce its position as a supplier of computing systems to CNET News.com's IT professional and business decision-maker audience.
Scott Anderson, eMarketing director at Sun Microsystems comments:

Sony Ericsson will target skate generation with a new campaign to back its new gaming phone, T310. As explained on Brand Republic, the campaign includes a microsite, accessed through banners on the magazine websites, which allows visitors to move through a mock urban street, sampling phone games and information on the product.

Skyy Vodka yesterday relaunched Skyy.com, hoping to better align its online presence with its film-centric advertising and events strategies. Quoted on
MediaDailyNews Skyy public relations manager Sue Hearn, explains:

I immediately surfed on the Web site... it's nice, very emotional, it makes you want to have a drink... maybe not exactly a vodka, given the fact that now it's early afternoon :-)
Btw the thing I liked the most is the possibility to choose you lounge music while browsing the web site. There are about twelve tunes to pick, from Bebel Gilberto to Ursula 1000.

Internet ad spending is expected to rise 7.4 percent this year, according to mid-year estimates from TNS Media Intelligence/CMR. The research company attributed increased spending to the strong upfront season, the continued rise of Hispanic media spending, the active political environment and the steady growth in new brand spending. To learn more, read on the news reported on Ad Week.

Overture has recently launched a new advertising program called "Content Match". As explained by Andrew Goodman on Traffick, the most promising aspect of Content Match is a sign that Overture is going to let advertisers opt out of forms of traffic they don't want - functionality in which they've shown nary a glimmer of interest in the past.

MobileWay and Sony Pictures Mobile, have lauched: 'Charlie�s Angels�: Full Throttle'. As explained in the press release, it consists of a premium mobile services package available to Charlie's Angels fun in Australia, France, New Zealand, Italy, Spain and Singapore. The portfolio of services includes: polyphonic and monophonic ring tones including �Feel Good Time� by Pink; colour backgrounds with scenes from the film; MMS animations to forward onto friends; �Charlie�s Angels�: Road Cyclone,� a Java� game involving a motorbike chase against the evil Diva Indigo and her gang; as well as SMS trivia quizzes to win prizes or simply to test your calibre as an angel or your ability to charm one of the heroines.
To learn more, you can also have a look at the official Website: Charlies Angel's: Full Throttle.

eBay Inc. has signed a global, multiyear pact to use its marketing tools and ad-serving technology provided by DoubleClick.
eBay will use DoubleClick's online advertising solutions to enhance the efficiency performance of its online advertising programs, and to provide the ad serving and management capability for its new Keywords on eBay service announced yesterday.
You can read on the press release on DoubleClick's website.

How effective is a rich media campaign in online advertising? Is it worth the investment, or it's better to focus on other kind of ads? Nielsen NetRatings and Dynamic Logic have tries to answer this question in a recent research summarized yesterday on MediaDailyNews.

Overture's business is getting serious and serious, but the skepticism still remains. As Michael Liedtke writes today on San Mateo County Times Online Wall Street is worried the 6-year-old company will become obsolete almost as quickly as it emerged as a pioneer.
Despite this premise, the article provides plenty of positive information concerning Overture's business, especially considering the fact that pay-for-performance search is expected to attract as much as $2 billion in Internet advertising this year, up from $100 million just three years ago.

Just-auto.com News reports that Nissan has launched a pan-European brand advertising campaign with Yahoo to promote three of its key models, the new Micra, 350Z and X-trail.
Nissan has decided to use digital media since an high volume of potential customers research new cars online.

Fallon and Optimedia have won the first Titanium Lion for 'The Hire', their ground-breaking online series of short films for BMW. The Titanium Lion was created this year to honour work in any category that, in the words of the organisers, "causes the industry to stop in its tracks and reconsider the way forward". The news is reported by Jennifer Whitehead on Brand Republic.

We are getting plenty of evidence that helps us prove that online advertising works. So why then are 99% of online ads complete rubbish? This is the question asked (and answered) by Tom Bazeley of Tribal DDB yesterday on New Media Age.
A creative revolution in online advertising is long overdue. To find out how and why, read on the article...

We are getting plenty of evidence that helps us prove that online advertising works. So why then are 99% of online ads complete rubbish? This is the question asked (and answered) by Tom Bazeley of Tribal DDB yesterday on New Media Age.
A creative revolution in online advertising is long overdue. To find out how and why, read on the article...

Profero, a UK digital communications agency, today announced the launch of a new UK campaign for Lufthansa.
The aim of the campaign is to make the UK target audience aware that they can save by travelling with Lufthansa, and still not give up the comforts of flying with a traditional airline. It also promotes the online booking services on Lufthansa.co.uk and its benefits including a �10 discount on the fare.
Media placement is concentrated on the travel sections of portals such as Ask Jeeves and Lycos, news sites and travel sites (e.g. Conde Naste Traveller and Timeout), and is aimed at creating maximum reach with the target audience. Creative (produced by Plan.net, copy by Profero) consists of banners and pop-ups as well as e-mails. On Profero's web site you can see examples of the creative.

Lycos held auditions for the new role in London after deciding, in a blatant case of ageism, that the current Lycos dog was too old for the job. As reported on Revolution Magazine they have now picked Monte...
Advertising rules are tough, even for dogs :-(

Online, a strong brand is vital. This is the key statement by Gary Stein in his today's column on ClickZ.
I really enjoyed what he wrote since he pointed out four important and useful elements that are often forgotten or worse, underestimated, when taking a brand online.

Two upcoming summer releases, "The Hulk" and "Legally Blonde 2" will be promoted also using wireless marketing. As IAR reports, both Universal Pictures and MGM have decided to start mobile campaigns with text-messaging sweepstakes and themed ringtones.

Since "word-of-mouth" it's a key issue in a movie promotion, the decision to start using cellular phones to get people talk about movies appears to be particularly interesting.
In my opinion, the problem, again, might become the spam. Mobile phones (and mobile users) gotta be handled with care, privacy respect is not an option.

Reebok is launching "Reebok's Whodunit?" a new multimedia campaign that will be featured on the Internet as well as on tv. As explained yesterday on IAR four NBA players will star in a crime mistery while users will partecipate to the investigation with the chance to win tickets for the All Star Game 2004. As Mickey Pant, Reebok's chief marketing officer, said:

Mobile marketing is no more a huge question mark. Some years have passed and marketer have learnt important lesson on how to use it. Mobile marketing is now being integrated into longer term marketing strategies, and I'm sure Sue Norris's article onRevolution Magazine will prove very useful to everyone who is interested in learning more about the possibilities offered by this tool.
I'm just sorry that the article's layout is not very usable even if you print it. The only solution is to cut & paste in a Word document and then to format it.

In the Search Engine War, Google makes a move announcing AdSense, a new self-service program for publishers to serve up its contextual advertising. The opinion of Susan Wojcicki, director of products at Google is quoted by Brian Morrisey on IAR:

If you want to learn everything on @d:tech, then go toMarketingFix: @d:tech Gossip and Photos where Jack and Rick have posted pics and comments on the event.
I remember attending the event in Amsterdam a couple of years ago. It was a lot of fun, especially because I was there on account of ClickZ...

Nike dominated this year's Cyber Lions Adage winning seven Lions for work in four different countries.
"If this continues, this is going to become the Nike festival, at least on the cyber side" remarked Cyber jury president Marco Tinelli of Paris agency FullSIX.
More information concerning the Web sites awards can be found on Brand Republic while the complete list of awared Cyber Lyons is on Le Journal du Net (fr).

Nigel Cope on the Independent today tells the story of Daniel Ishag and Seb Bishop, founders of Espotting Media who became multi-millionaires when yesterday they sold the Company to an American group.
Espotting Media has been sold to Findwhat.com which operates a similar Internet software technology.

As Anita Jain reports on Crain's New York Business Doubleclick has survived the dot-com bust and massive reductions in its staff, and is on track to post its first annual net profit.

24/7 Real Media has launched last week Open Advertiser(TM) 2.0 software. enables marketers to control the serving and the analysis of its ad campaigns across multiple sites, as well as improve the quality of its results by serving contextually relevant ads based on information gleaned within the process and customer information the marketer owns. The
press release is on the company's Web site.
For me it has been a chance to go and visit 24/7 web site... arghh it's awful! Sorry guys, but I believe it's really messy and not usable at all...

Visitors to WSJ.com, the Wall Street Journal online, were targeted for the first time yesterday by behaviour-based ads. The system being used at WSJ.com was developed by Revenue Science in Bellevue, Washington. The news is reported today on Brand Republic.

Michael Totty, on the WSJ, and republished on The Detroit News talks about advertising metrics.

Icelandic feminists and women in general have decided to take Icelandair to court. The Centre for Gender Equality and The Icelandic Women's Rights Association, are suing Icelandair for allegedly violating the recently-passed Equal Rights Act with its advertising. As reported today on Yahoo! News "Some of Icelandair's campaigns where Icelandic women are presented as sex objects obviously violate the laws. By using word games the company is suggesting that Icelandic women are loose or promiscuous".

There's a very interesting article by Nicholas Thompson today on The Globalist. It's dedicated to online political advertising, a topic that I follow with particular interest since it was supposed to be the subject of my thesis. As Mr Thompson said, despite the premises, information technology hasn't lived up to its worldwide political promise. Several candidates have been using the Net to promote themselves but, still, in no case it has proved to be a mature tool to fulfil their needs.

As reported today on Hollywoodreporter.com Universal Pictures are heavily using the online space to promote the upcoming movie "The Hulk". In particular, the green hero will appear on the Yahoo! network in a series of rich media ads.
I went on Yahoo! and I saw the ads (Screenshot 1 | Screenshot 2 | Screenshot 3
) and I can tell you I like to things: first, you can choose whether or not to listen to the music and, second, you can tell Yahoo! what you think about the ad. What I disliked it's that ad itself, too confusing and somehow annoying. To summarize, a good idea, a disappointing layout.
By the way, Universal Pictures as also signed a Deal with Mastercard for limited edition credit card branded The Hulk. How can you live without it? ;-)

In rich media ads, Size Does Matter. This is Rob Graham's opinion as expressed in his last column on ClickZ.
It's an interesting discussion concerning rich media guidelines set by online publishers. The idea is to provide visitors with a better navigation experience, but the result is a damaging limit to advertising effectiveness.

In a press release published today, DoubleClick has announced its declaration of war to spam. The Company will launch a series of initiatives "designed to help legitimate marketers and the email marketing industry betterunderstand and leverage policy, research, education, and technology, in the fight against Spam, and to further differentiate legitimate marketing communications from Spam."

As The Associated Press reports today on a wide range of news Web sites, U.S. online-advertising revenue showed a healthy increase in the fourth quarter of 2002, breaking a two-year declining trend. However, the industry remains below its revenue levels at the height of the boom.
You can read the news, for example, on Bizreport.

As Frank Barnako reports today on CBS.MarketWatch.com:

Futhermore, you can have a look at IAR where yesterday Brian Morrissey wrote an article presenting the research note issued Tuesday, where Goldman Sachs Internet analyst Anthony Noto doubled his forecast for the online advertising industry in 2003. Noto now expects revenue to increase 10 percent to $5.2 billion, up substantially from his earlier 5 percent growth forecast. In the article are also presented some predictions concerning Yahoo!, Overture and AOL revenue this year.

The new report on Online Advertising will be released by eMarketer at the end of this month. As the NYC based company revealed today in its daily newsletter, the report will also feature demographics concerning US Internet Users. For example, US Internet users spend online, on average, range from 261 hours to 702 hours per year and, according to eMarketer's estimate, based on its analysis of all the relevant research data, each users spends online 7.6 hours weekly.
I wish I was spending only 7.6 hours per week online. I guess this is my daily average�

The mobile content industry has slammed the launch of the Mobile Data Association's new regime for premium rate SMS as ill-thought-out and commercially damaging. Justin Pearse reports on New Media Zero the industry reactions to the recent decision by the MDA, taken without consultation.

Andrew Goodman presents on SearchEngineGuide.com: The Seven-or-So Habits of Highly Profitable PPC Campaigns. In the article the author summarizes seven characteristics that successful search engine advertising campaigns have in common.

Online companies continue choosing the offline environment to promote their business. As BrandWeek reported, Hotels.com "breaks a national TV campaign that is meant to separate the online booking and destination site from both its Web and non-Internet competition".

Until June 13th Klm, the Dutch airliner, runs on its Web sites the game Scratch & Win. In order to write an article for MyTech.it (published today) I've asked the company a couple of questions on the advergame. These are the answers I received from Youssef Eddini, Head of Staff & Press Commercial.
Do you run the campaign world-wide?
The game is live in 38 countries world-wide.
How many tickets are you giving away?
In each country participants can win tickets to various European destinations.
Which is the agency that created the campaign?
Avance Interactive B.V. A company based in Hilversum, the Netherlands.
How many people have been playing the game since its lauch? And how many do you expect will be playing it in the future?
Several 10.000's of people worlwide. We see that especially in Italy and Germany people are very interested to play online games.
What is the goal KLM wants to reach with this campaign? Is it branding? Online tickets sales? Both?
We'd like to offer our visitors to the website and the subscribers to our newsletter interactive entertainment on a regular basis plus a chance to win interesting prizes.
I've seen that KLM has often used online campaigns to promote its brand. What's the company's attitude towards online advertising?
Online advertising is used as a regular part of our total communications mix and is present in almost all of our campaigns.
Do you believe it's an effective way to connect with customers?
The effectiveness of online advertising differs per objective and target group of course. With KLM's current drive to increase the number of online transactions dramatically, the online audience has a higher likelihood of actually using our online products and services. Coverage within that online target group is therefore very important to us.
In particular, do you trust advergames and advertainment to help you reaching your marketing goals?
Advergames and advertainment support the attractiveness of your site. As long as the entertainment offered on the site bears relevance to the product offering, we do believe it support actual conversion to sales.

And you, what are you waiting for? Scratch & Win :-)

Richard Linnett reported yesterday on AdAge that ESPN is reporting some success in selling its broadband streaming video feature ESPN Motion. Lexus, Gatorade, Universal Pictures and Warner Brothers have already decided to buy an ad space on the product.

WebSideStory today announced the launch of new conversion analytics capabilities that make it even easier for businesses to streamline navigation, eliminate roadblocks and increase conversions. The new Hitbox allows marketer to draw a precise picture of how visitors are navigating through a site, providing them with relevant information to better target their promotional messages.
To learn more, you can read the Press Release on the Company's Web site.

A special report from the Search Engine Strategies conference in Boston by Shari Thurow is published today on SearchEngineWatch: The Future of Search Engine Marketing.

The Web search company is profitable since December, has signed a deal with Google and it's ready to have a primary position in the search-based advertising market. AskJeeves has benefited from the momentum in the industry, a form of online advertising that proves to be very effective. The analysis of Ask Jeeves' future is written today by Steve Tanner on Biz Ink.

Tobi Elkin writes today on Adage an interesting feature on music promotions on the Web. Online exposure it's crucial for artists and album promotion. It's somehow a weird news to read, given the fact that music labels have always been fighting the Internet's free music download and file-sharing services. Life or death, the game is now played online.

Search engine Google is to provide context-relevant ads to Lycos' homepage building community, Lycos Tripod, across Europe. Google said the deal will extend the reach of its syndicated paid-for links product, AdWords, to an extra 4m Web pages. Read the news on on
NewMediaZero.

IDC has release a
Press Release that presents the results of a recent study on the US wireless market. Although the U.S. ringtone market is small in 2003, a combination of several key trends will drive the revenue opportunity for this market to more than $1 billion by 2007.

As Brand Republic reports today, Virgin Mobile has created a new controversial viral campaign that includes "mangina" scene that was deemed too saucy for television.
However the campaign can be watched online following this link.
I saw it and I believe it's a quite strong ad, if they wanted people to talk about it, I'm sure they're gonna reach the goal.

According to Nielsen Media Research total UK advertising spend was up 4% in April and TV - the biggest medium in terms of expenditure - increased by more than 8% year on year.
The news is reported today by Claire Cozens on Media Guardian.

Len Ellis presents today on ClickZ an introduction to wireless marketing. Since mobile phones are getting popular and popular in the USA it's time for the American marketer to start considering this powerful but tangled device. Wireless marketing can prove very effective both for declaring a brand victory or defeat. That's why, as Ellis points out, every campaign needs to be guided by or collecting personal information face the same hurdles:

United Airlines is launching a major advertising campaign not only to promote a new frequent-flier ("Fly Three, Fly Freeplan) but to make a statement of confidence about the future. It's curious to see that United Airlines will run ads on radio, billboards, airport posters and additional print and online advertising will follow for several weeks, but no television commercials are planned.
Read more on Chicago Business.

According to new research results released by the Interactive Advertising Bureau bigger ad sizes work better. The study has analysed the effectiveness of different online ad sizes used in the McDonalds' campaign and has shown that larger larger rich media ads perform better in communicating brand attributes.
The news is reported today by Marsha Geller on Mediapost.

With as much or more at stake as any other constituency, the nation's biggest advertisers and their agencies have been closely tracking the battle over media consolidation. William Spain reports today on CBS.MarketWatch.com.

Nielsen//NetRatings on Monday launched AdRelevance 4.0, offering advertising and media buying and selling communities new tracking tools to help better measure and research online advertising campaigns. Read the press release (.pdf).

Ad technology player ValueClick has acquired today Search123.com, a paid search company for $5 million in cash. The news is reported today on Internet News in an article by Brian Morrissey who also provides a brief picture of the evolving search engine market quoting Yankee Group's analysts.

"Feel the Fury" advertising campaign for the University of Miami Hurricanes football has been awarded by Web Marketing Association (WMA) for Best General Interest Rich-Media Advertisement.
The news is reported today on Hurricane's web site.

According to a annual survey by Japanese advertising agency Dentsu, advertising hit hard times in 2002 with adspend falling for the year. All media sectors witnessed a drop, most of all online advertising which had a year-on-year decline of 15%.

According to Mr Cook, director of technology investing at Munder Capital Management, quoted today on Quicken.com, investors can eventually be confident in online advertising firms. Broadband adoption, he said, is going to be driven to new heights by advertising, commerce and subscription revenue.

A new tool to block rich media ads will be soon offered to its subscribers by Earthlink. As described in an article of Yahoo! News, the access provider will help web surfers stopping pop-up and pop-unders. Last August EarthLink launched a pop-up blocker that has been downloaded by 1.2 million customers.
On the matter the are different opinions: EarthLink believes that "Pop-up ads started off as a legitimate vehicle for people to monetize their sites but what we saw ended up being used irresponsibly and generated a strong backlash from consumers and tools to control them". While Jupiter Research associate analyst Nate Elliott was uncertain how many people would actually choose to use the tool: "Most people see Flash content as beneficial because it gives them interesting animation.".

The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) today launches a new integrated branding campaign aimed at helping marketers understand how they can best employ interactive advertising to more effectively reach their business goals. The first wave of the integrated advertising campaign will appear in print, outdoor and online publications beginning May 28. The campaign profiles marketing executives who have helped their brands become �superheroes� by tapping the potency of interactive in tandem with an overall marketing plan.
Read on the press release on IAB's Web site.

It sounds a little bit unexpected but, according to a recent Doubleclick's research, spam hasn't hurt e-mail marketing. Of course this information comes from one of the main providers of e-mail marketing technologies, and therefore has to be "handled with care".
In addition, the commenting article on Internet News reports that Jupiter Research, projects companies will spend $1.4 billion on e-mail marketing this year.

Are looking for more cool interactive ideas? Check the archives