With Ring-Back Tones (RBT) becoming more popular everyday, especially in areas outside the U.S., the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) has published a new whitepaper detailing the appropriate opportunities and considerations when working with the concept.

Created with the help of MMA members 4play Digital Workshop, Comverse, Livewire Mobile, Ringco and Xipto, the whitepaper is designed to provide marketers with insight into the little-known and regulated concept of marketing via Ring-Back Tones, to ensure a positive, rewarding experience for consumers.

The concept of RBTs have been around for a while now, but only used by carriers in a very under-utilized environment.  Recently though, the possibilities have been introduced to third-party advertisers who recognize the unique opportunity and reach the concept has.

“Although ring-back tones have been repurposed by operators for almost a decade, it’s only recently that marketers are able to take advantage of this opportunity,” explained Rohit Dadwal, Managing Director, APAC, Mobile Marketing Association.  ”With more than 3 billion mobile phones in use worldwide, and approximately 12 billion inbound calls each day, RBTs offer a compelling new media platform for marketers today.  In line with MMA’s efforts to educate marketers and protect consumer experience, MMA members have put together this whitepaper to provide insights into harvesting the potential of this new emerging area of focus as a marketing channel.”

For example, a Tier 1 operator in India with a subscriber-based of roughly 70 million, has each subscriber receiving an average of 10 incoming calls per day representing a penetration rate of 4 to 5 percent. This has the potential to make advertising via Ring-Back Tones the single most powerful marketing medium on the mobile handset, continued Dadwal.

Though the opportunity is present, there’s numerous chances for marketers to upset subscribers forced to listen to ads when placing calls if not done correctly, which is why the MMA stepped in to lay some ground rules to ensure marketers and consumers alike can find a middle ground with the concept.

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As millions of eyes were tuned to the Oscars last night, the stage was set for one man to use the massive platform for a unique SMS call-to-action, whether the show’s producers wanted him to or not.

During the acceptance speech for winning best Documentary, the subject of which, Ric O’Barry, held up a sign that read “text DOLPHIN to 44144.”  Even though the camera cut away quickly, the message was still understood.

O’Barry, who captured and trained the first five dolphins who played Flipper in the popular 1960s TV series, dedicated the rest of his life to protecting and freeing dolphins from captivity after witnessing the ramifications of his actions — as well as the suicide of one of the Flipper dolphins in his arms.  His life’s work was chronicled in the documentary “The Cove,” which won the Oscar last night for best documentary of the year.

Following through on the campaign and texting “Dolphin” to 44144 returned a link to an Online petition and a means to send a letter to Pres. Obama.  MsgMe, the provider of the 44144 short code used in the call-to-action, said even though cameras cut away quickly when O’Barry held up the sign, the response was still significant.

“We saw steady traffic for the next five hours and have seen a huge spike in support over Twitter which we believe is generating the bulk of the traffic,” said Matt Silk of Waterfall Mobile, provider of the MsgMe SMS platform in an email today.  ”New subscribers are still coming in at a pretty healthy clip to sign the petition so we are ecstatic with the viral explosion of the campaign.”

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For the first time ever, advertisers will spend more on digital than print, according to a new study by Outsell released today titled “Marketing and Ad Spending Study 2010: Total US and B2B Advertising.” But mobile marketing isn’t quite ready for the spotlight yet, and will see a spending decline in the coming year. The study finds that advertisers will spend 16% less on mobile in 2010.

Of the $368 billion marketers will spend this year, 32.5% will go toward digital, 30.3% will go towards print. “It’s a watershed moment,” lead author of the study and Outsell vice president Chuck Richard told Forbes.com. However, in regards to mobile marketing, “the proof isn’t in yet that mobile spending is all that effective,” Richard adds in the article. He gives the example of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit iPhone app which was the 33rd-highest-grossing mobile app in the iPhone store — 32,000 people paid $2 to download the app, netting $64k. However, one page of advertising in the issue makes $135,000. Richard obviously isn’t a fan of mobile marketing. “It’s time for a reality check,” he says.

But mobile marketing isn’t just about iPhone apps, and comparing the amount of money made from an iPhone app to the money made from print advertising is comparing apples to bananas. If you’re a brand, you don’t necessarily build an iPhone app just to make money from that app. The app may also be for increasing brand loyalty and seen as a digital PR move. Also, iPhone apps can make money later with in-app advertising that makes the app download fee worth more than the original purchase price.

The Outsell study collected data from 1,008 US advertisers in both consumer and B2B that marketers in December 2009. Stats that advertisers will spend 16% less on mobile in 2010 might scare mobile marketers, but it’s a natural pause after a growth spurt in the industry. Over the past year, there was a lot of excitement and experimentation in mobile marketing and advertising, and likely advertisers had unrealistic expectations in ROI in a still young smartphone market.

In the year’s to come, mobile advertising spend will likely go up. That’s according to me, not the Outsell study. The reason for this? Mobile is more than phones, and in the coming years we’ll see mobile-connected devices become more popular in the mainstream. Tablets, netbooks, portable network-connected gaming devices (like Sony’s upcoming PlayStation phone) will allow the rise in digital ad spending to leak into mobile and grow mobile ad spend in the next decade.

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Millennial Media has released its first S.M.A.R.T report of the new year, following its 2009 “year in review” posted last month.  Along with the usual data and insight from Millennial’s ever-growing network, this month’s report includes a special section comparing the performance of advertising on mobile devices using norms developed in online ad testing- a unique study conducted by InsightExpress.

First, a little context- the mobile Web, as measured by Nielsen, came in at a total audience of 67,004,000.  Of which, Millennial reached roughly 54,371,000 via its network, representing a network audience reach of 81% of total U.S mobile Internet users.  “Traffic to Site” remained the primary destination advertisers directed traffic to, once again, representing 45 percent of the total campaign destination mix, while custom landing pages and app downloads came in second and third at 34 percent and 16 percent respectively.

With regards to the study conducted by InsightExpress on behalf of Millennial Media, five categories were used — unaided awareness, aided awareness, mobile ad awareness, brand favorability and purchase intent — comparing campaign effectiveness by ad vertical.  Mobile campaigns in the Retail Vertical showed the largest differences in three of the five categories; Aided Awareness, Purchase Intent, and Unaided Awareness, while CPG campaigns indexed high in the Brand Favorability category.

To wrap things up for this month’s report, Millennial revealed that 10 percent of its advertisers used rich media creative during January, while average monthly pageviews per user reached 127.  Most surprising of all though, was the fact that Apple impressions experienced the largest month over month increase ever in January at 71 percent.

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Google is obviously serious about mobile advertising, and is filing patents left and right with one common theme- location.  We reported a while back that Google had developed a process — and filed a patent — for “sniffing” data packets sent and received by users utilizing location-based services in an attempt to come as close as possible to having what the carriers have- true user location data at all times for its subscribers.

Last Tuesday, Google was awarded a patent filed over six years ago related to using location for “targeting, setting a minimum price bid for an ad, offering performance analytics, and modifying the content of an ad,” as well.  While broad, it covers all basis for Google’s plan for mobile advertising, even though most of what they describe is already being implemented by the company.  Last week, for example, Google starting allowing users to modify their search results based on their location to show results nearby, and Google Buzz was launched using “location feeds” as well.  Here’s what the patent states as part of its abstract;

The location information used to target and/or score ads may be, include, or define an area. The area may be defined by at least one geographic reference point (e.g., defined by latitude and longitude coordinates) and perhaps additional information. Thus, the area may be a circle defined by a geographic reference point and a radius, an ellipse defined by two geographic reference points and a distance sum, or a polygon defined by three or more geographic reference points, for example.

Its just yet another pawn in the game by both Google and Apple to dominate in the mobile advertising market each want so badly.  When Google bought up AdMob, Apple fired right back with Quattro’s acquisition, and each are making move after move to help themselves compete stronger.  While one would think that Google has the undoubted upper-hand, Apple’s sheer reach with its iPhone and the lock it has on the device from hardware to software to now advertising gives it a stronger position than even Google would like to admit.

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