Mobile Content Revenues from Premium SMS

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Mobile Content Revenues From Premium SMS

By: Jordan McCollum
2007-06-18

The Center for Media Research today reports on a new study on mobile content revenue, the Telephia Premium SMS Report.

In Q1 2007, premium SMS brought in $273M, or 32% of all mobile content revenues.

For this study, premium SMS included everything from voting for American Idol to "off-portal storefront purchases," which included ringtones, screensavers and the like. Naturally, off-portal storefront purchases generated the highest amount of revenue: $214.9M or 79% of premium SMS revenue.

Other large revenue categories included voting and sweepstakes entries, with $35.4M (13%), chat/community, with $5.7M (2%), and "other," with $17.4M (6%).

Despite the fact that off-portal storefront purchases lead out in the amount of revenue, they trailed in volume of transactions. Voting (for American Idol, etc.) and sweepstakes (Deal or No Deal, etc.) won out with 47% of premium SMS volume, or almost 35M transactions. Off-portal storefronts received 40% of premium SMS volume (29.5M transactions). Chat/community received 7% of transactions (just under 5.5M) and "other," 6% (4.2M).

To state the obvious, although off-portal storefronts received lower volume, their higher revenue is accounted for by higher average prices. The off-portal storefronts averaged about $7.25 in revenue per transaction; voting and sweepstakes averaged about $1 per transaction.

With just under 74M total transactions in Q1 2007, premium SMS still has room to grow. Is this the future of mobile marketing, or is it just the easiest way to reach mobile users where they are right now?

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About the Author:
Jordan McCollum is a staff writer for the popular marketing blog Marketing Pilgrim. She has worked in search engine optimization with clients including 3M, Little Giant Ladders and ADP. After graduating from Brigham Young University, Jordan joined the SEO copywriting team at the Internet marketing firm 10x Marketing. After 10x closed its doors in December 2006, Jordan became a freelance writer and Internet marketing consultant specializing in SEO. She also has extensive experience with web analytics, conversion rate enhancement and e-mail marketing.


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