Looking for Visitors from Europe? Try SMS Ads

According to a press release issued by comScore, Inc. in London last month, SMS dominated the mobile advertising landscape in the EU5 countries (UK, France, Germany, Spain and Italy). According to comScore, SMS ads reached 100 million people, representing 43.6 percent of the 230.5 million EU5 mobile users in September 2010.

Text messaging ranks highest by a wide margin in terms of mobile content usage, with 82.1 percent of EU5 mobile subscribers using this feature in the three-month average period ending Sept. 2010. This data point should certainly help shape your show’s mobile marketing programs in the short term but it is essential you keep an eye on fast-moving trends in the mobile space, especially smartphone penetration and usage habits of people with these more powerful handsets.

While the headline of the comScore release was “More than 100 Million Consumers in EU5 Received SMS Advertising”, the subhead was “Smartphone Adoption Shifts Dynamics of Mobile Marketing Toward Web/App ads.”  According to the comScore data, nearly a quarter of the mobile audience recalled seeing an ad on the Internet or in an application, and more than half of the people seeing these ads were smartphone owners. There are 64.3 million smartphone users in the EU5. Smartphone penetration across the EU5 was 30.2 percent, but varies considerably by country with Italy being the highest at 34.4 percent and Germany being the lowest at 21.4 percent.

“While the majority of mobile adverts are still effectively distributed via SMS and good response rates indicate acceptance among mobile phone owners, the growing smartphone adoption across all EU5 countries continues to enable the emergence of richer mobile advertising,” said comScore’s European VP Mobile, Jeremy Copp.

Check-out the chart below to see the reach and response rates for different types of mobile advertising.

Of course, it is important to keep in mind this is aggregate EU5 data. Numbers in your particular industry and/or demographics may vary significantly. Use these numbers as a starting point and then drill down into your target audiences to determine what will work best for promoting your show.

*Responded by replying to the text message, clicking on a link to a website that was in the text message or calling a telephone number that was included in the text message at least once during the three month average.

**Web/App Ads include all ads (banner ads or advertising text links) on websites that were visited using the web browser on a mobile phone or were in applications that are installed on the mobile phone

Posted on December 9, 2010