While SMS advertising may not have the “wow” factor of Augmented Reality, Location Based advertising, or a mobile app, it is worth remembering that sometimes - depending on the brand objectives - SMS advertising might prove to be the alternative that produces the best ROI!

The strength of SMS is based on two key facets:

• the reach of SMS far outweighs other more “advanced” options on the mobile device, as essentially every phone in the world is SMS capable.
• a higher percentage of consumers understand how to use SMS and feel comfortable using it.

As such, brands should not forget how powerful SMS can be as an advertising medium if used properly.

This is underlined in a study commissioned by Placecast and carried out by Harris Interactive that shows that users still consider texting as more important than any other activity on the mobile device apart from voice.

The Harris survey included over 2,000 people, aged 18 and over, from across the US, and examined mobile phone usage.

SMS vs. Checking-in

The study found that 40% of users rated texting either “extremely important” or “very important” to them. This was much higher than for certain newer, highly-hyped types of interaction, such as “checking in” for location-based services such as Foursquare and Gowalla which were similarly rated by only 7% of men and 3% of women .

Alistair Goodman

“We see in this data that texting is super-easy to use for both advertisers and consumers. For instance, middle-aged women are very brand-loyal and want to receive alerts on offers, but don’t want to use an application for it: for them, alerts are a utility and not a game they would like to play,” said Placecast CEO Alistair Goodman.

Use of location information

The survey also looked at the use of a subscriber’s location in order to target or personalize advertising, and found that a reasonably good level of acceptance: only 10% of people surveyed found that using their location in advertisements was intrusive, while 1/3 found them very useful. In other studies, this level of acceptance has been found to be even greater.

We have seen this acceptance of mobile location assisted advertisement grow over the past few years, but still it is clear that the most important thing when dealing with a personal device, such as a mobile phone, is to provide consumers with extremely relevant information that the consumer will not find intrusive.