Boston, MA - June 13, 2005 -- Strategy Analytics, the global research and consulting company, today released a new report entitled "Advertising on the Fourth Screen: Opt-In To Dominate Mobile Marketing Spend." This report from Strategy Analytics' Wireless Internet Applications service concludes that although momentum is building many barriers remain before the muscle of mobile advertising and marketing can be fully flexed.

SMS based mobile marketing activity has been dominated by companies within the FMCG sector, like Cadburys and McDonalds to date. Yet, as the availability of mobile multimedia content grows we expect greater participation from large advertising brands in the entertainment industry and those that have products targeted at the Young, Active and Fun, consumer segments, such as Nike.

However, Senior Analyst Nitesh Patel notes "Although there is growing interest in wireless from parts of the marketing community, take up will be tempered by weak consumer response rates, skepticism about the effectiveness of mobile advertising vis-à-vis traditional channels, (like TV and direct mail), and carriers' reluctance to compromise their position as the premium content delivery channel."

David Kerr, Vice President of the Strategy Analytics Global Wireless Practice, adds, "Advertising over wireless is more complex than TV, radio, and the Internet, because of the fragmentation caused by handset diversity and the uncertainty of take-up rates of different mobile technologies like video and Java. We expect sponsored video and audio services to grow strongly over the next five years capturing 17% of total spend by 2010, while browser based advertising will claim the greatest share with 44%."  

Figure 1 Browser Based Advertising Dominates Mobile Marketing Spend