"This kind of data is important to the whole mobile industry," says Paul Goode, senior analyst and vice president of product development at M: Metrics. "The consumption of mobile content is reaching saturation point and we believe one of the barriers is price. Mobile advertising can help lower the price of content or eliminate the cost altogether in some cases."

The results show that 29.1 percent of Spanish mobile users are responding to short codes in advertisements and other media. The numbers differ greatly from country to country: 18.5 percent in the UK, 10.1 percent in France, 7 percent in the US, and 3.4 percent in Germany.



Data is for an average month in the quarter ending in July 2006. © MMetrics, Inc.

A short code is a special number used for SMS or MMS with three to eight digits, depending on the country, that is easier to remember than a regular phone number.

The source of the short code is critical to its usefulness and success. Short codes on television gain the most response, by far. Of the Spanish respondents, 21.7 percent report responding to a short code found on TV. The type of short code was also an important factor in response rate, with contests topping four of the five countries, followed by downloads to device, entertainment and news.

The respondents who reported having received an SMS ad is even greater. Nearly all of the SMS ads are coming from the subscribers’ operators. In Spain, 66.8 percent of mobile subscribers report receiving an SMS ad. In France, the number is 50.1 percent, 36.8 percent in the UK, 29.6 percent in Germany and 12.8 percent in the US. Of the ads not received from operators, a distinction is made between companies that the subscriber perceives as having given permission and ones without permission.

The research compiles data from France, Spain, Germany, UK and US on general consumption of content and applications and short-code response rates. The data is based on a three-month moving average for a period ending August 31, 2006. The substantial survey size gives reliable results on the behaviors of mobile users in the countries surveyed. Nearly 90,000 mobile subscribers were surveyed across the five countries. And different people were surveyed each month to create the average.

By Aimée Ravacon