Inside Mobile Marketing

For those companies working within the Mobile Content & Marketing space - it’s no secret that the U.S. Carriers are very protective of their subscriber bases (and brands for that matter) and will take the necessary actions to protect these valuable assets. Just a short time ago, the Carriers employed protection measures in the form of forcing marketing companies to adhere to the MMA’s (mobile marketing association) Best Practices Guidelines . Subsequently, EACH Tier 1 Carrier created and distributed (to aggregators) a set of ADDITIONAL “rules” to be met by each Mobile Marketing Program that was running over their network. This of course did and continues to place a strain on marketing companies playing in this space in terms of keeping up with changes in compliance, policing the marketing actions of clients utilizing mobile and making technical changes to enabling technology.

The rather recent emergence of the niche business of 3rd-party mobile “Compliance Testing” - is adding yet another layer of complexity to the mix. Now these Audit shops are monitoring all the promotional activities associated with a mobile program (i.e. web-based, print, TV, wap, etc..) - plus the actual MO/MT messaging flows. If they see a program – mostly of the premium flavor – that is not in compliance, they serve an audit notice to the respective aggregator in which the shortcode is provisioned with and then the aggregator must work with the Client to correct the issue in a timely manner OR risk penalties that can be as severe as having the shortcode shut down.

All of this means that longer lead times will be required of marketing firms looking to launch mobile programs to ensure that their promotional materials are ready for compliance review by the Carriers when submitting new program briefs. It also means that Creativity will be constrained in terms of how a content retailer or marketer decides to merchandise, promote and utilize copy within their actual consumer facing programs. Advertisers and Marketers that are new to the Mobile Channel are always complaining of the “influence” that the Carriers are inserting into their marketing efforts and the Audit shops will certainly not mitigate this sentiment.