Is CBS Outdoor About To Give Shortcodes Their Day In The Sun?

Sometimes it amazes me how long it takes for the most basic technology to achieve any meaningful scale. Such is the curse of the early adopter...such is the curse of the entire mobile content space. It's been 7 years since Labatt's ran the first North American cross-carrier shortcode campaign...but as I've mentioned previously such initiatives have never gotten much love or achieved much scale in the US. During a focus group with 50 college-aged kids 2 summers ago I asked how many had ever entered in a shortcode into their mobile phone in response to a marketing message in another medium...and not one raised their hand. Even text marketing campaigns that are viewed as successful are usually deemed so because of amazing conversion rates...not the raw numbers of responses (which are usually very small). Well, that may be about to change. This week old media goliath CBS Outdoor announced that it's introducing a major SMS initiative dubbed txt2go that will allow its media clients to easily add keywords & shortcodes to out of home campaigns so that they can track their efficacy and extend the marketing relationship with respondents (with additional messaging, coupons, sweepstakes, etc.). It's obviously been possible to add shortcodes to outdoor campaign in the past...but it has always involved totally separate setup process (that is expensive & slow for those brands that don't have established shortcode initiatives) and coordination between a variety of vendors. In this case it's a "tick the box" at a cost of $225 per 500 responses and a 2-3 day setup time (this must be for shared shortcodes)...making it a much simpler proposition for clients. txt2go uses a text marketing platform from a company called Rip Road (must say...had never heard of them). I'm actually surprised that one of the text messaging big boys like mBlox, VeriSign, 2ergo or Singlepoint isn't directly powering this initiative...but whatever, good for Rip Road. It will be really interesting to see how many & how quickly CBS Outdoor clients bolt this functionality onto their campaigns. I'm keeping my eyes open.

2ergo Zips Up Its Wapfly

According to a story from Mobile Entertainment yesterday Manchester, UK based WAP and SMS platform powerhouse (and Cabana Mobile Entertainment Stock Index component) 2ergo Group Plc. (RGO) has further expanded their global footprint by acquiring Aussie mobile marketing firm Wapfly. This is similar to the way they expanded into the US & LatAm by acquiring US mobile pioneer Proteus back in 2006. Besides the geographical appeal Wapfly comes with some high profile clients (notably giant pubcaster Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), Conde Nast & Motorola) and some capability in developing new platform applications...they recently deployed an ad-supported iPhone App for the ABC which had 50k downloads in 3weeks. No one seems to know what they paid (I'll keep digging).

With this acquisition, 2ergo, which generated ~$50mil in revenue & ~$5mil profit last year, is even better positioned to become a global leader in the deployment of scalable, enterprise grade, turnkey mobile solutions for brands seeking a meaningful mobile presence. Strangely this space is still primarily populated with small shops using either licensed or homegrown glue & duct tape platforms...catering to firms who don't know any better. But as brands get more sophisticated about mobile, as they want to run more innovative global campaigns and manage/monetize their traffic, they will realize the value of more robust platforms and migrate to the quality players in the space like 2ergo.