MoMo Mumbai - October Event Report

November 12th, 2007

The October event of Mobile Monday Mumbai was held around the topic “Permission Marketing Opportunities on Mobile“. More than 100 mobile industry folks from Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and Pune participated in the panel and group discussion.

Although still in its infancy, the mobile permission marketing ecosystem is coming together in India. The event saw participants from various constituents of the mobile marketing ecosystem like publishers with pull, push and user-generated inventory, small and big advertisers, intermediaries like ad agencies and ad networks as well as the operators.

Panelists included SMS publishers, which are the equivalent in the mobile world to online publishers i.e. internet websites:
Rajesh Jain of MyTodaySMS.com - a SMS content channels service which is an example of push SMS inventory for ads.
Ajay Vaishnavi of 58888 - a request-reply service which has pull SMS inventory for advertisers.
Sanyog Jain of 160by2.com - a free SMS service, which provides half of SMS as ad space to advertisers.

Vinod Thadani of GroupM takled about the need for SMS publishers to collect profiles of their users so that greater targetting of ads can be provided to advertisers. There was discussion on pricing of SMS ads and how an ads-auction system similar to Google AdSense can create value for publishers and advertisers.

Rajesh Jain presented his ideas around SMS advertising and defined permission as “user in control” of the opt-in/opt-out as well as the mode and time of delivery. He also talked about how companies can use “Invertising” (invited-advertising), in which users choose to receive brand communication as content.

Some of things which are still work-in-progress include whether pay-per-response or pay-per-impression pricing will rule, DNC is still a black-box and not much is known about its impact on permission based SMS advertising, and the key issue of the value add done by operators in SMS advertising. The event concluded with acknowledgment of the potential of SMS advertising, the early adoption of the medium by mainstream advertisers and the need for industry innovators to work together and shape the fledgling mobile permission marketing ecosystem.

Entry Filed under: MoMo Mumbai