Growing mobile subscribers to boost SMS-based marketing

Mobile marketing in the Philippines is set to capture a decent amount of advertising as Filipinos remain attached to their cellular phones, industry executives said on Wednesday. The 86-member Internet and Mobile Marketing Association of the Philippines (IMMAP) is targeting to corner between two percent and three percent or $60 million to $90 million of the $3-billion industry. IMMAP president Arthur Policarpio said the fastest growing media channel in the Philippines is SMS-based as mobile subscribers rose exponentially to 70 million as of July 2009 from less than one million subscribers in 1996. The Philippines was one of the first countries to use SMS remittance and SMS credit transfer services. It also remains the SMS capital of the world with over one billion text messages sent each day and revenues from text messaging on par with those from voice services. “The Philippine market has a high mobile penetration rate and strong usage coupled with the planned deployment of 3.5G networks by local operators. The MMA (Mobile Marketing Association) believes that revenues allocated to mobile marketing in the Philippines will grow faster than Internet marketing in the next 12 to 24 months," said Rohit Dadwal, MMA managing director for Asia Pacific. The MMA is the world's largest trade organization for mobile marketing with close to 750 member companies. In fact, mobile Internet users in the country are also growing. Yahoo! Mobile showed there are about 1.2-million monthly unique users, who rack up about 128 million monthly page views. The opportunity in mobile marketing extends beyond SMS, IMMAP said. The group is looking at “bluetooth marketing, multimedia mobile marketing, mobile applications and mobile internet." “Mobile is essential, rather than experimental," MMA president and chief executive officer Mike Wehrs said. However, barriers for increased adoption of mobile marketing include abuse of consumer privacy and rights, lack of industry-specific research, lack of knowledge on mobile marketing on the part of advertisers and the lack of industry-wide metrics and measurement. IMMAP has partnered with MMA to allow the local group to further drive increased adoption of mobile marketing in the Philippines by bringing together all of the industry's important stakeholders, such as telecom operators, publishers, agencies, media companies, mobile content and service providers, as well as advertisers. “We will work closely with the MMA to craft a strategic action plan to accelerate growth of the industry at the local level with particular focus on research and education initiatives, development of metrics and measurement, adoption of best practices and guidelines, as well as an active partnership with key local regulatory bodies," Policarpio said. Bringing together 24 founding member companies, the MMA Philippines Local Council is the second to be launched in the Asia Pacific region in the last four months after India. Meanwhile, Charmaine Canillas, chairperson of the local association of advertisers, said the AdBoard welcomes the formation of the MMA Philippines Local Council. -GMANews.TV