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Mobile Entertainment Forum Survey on Proposed SMS Fee Increase Illustrates Gap Between Carriers and Content Marketers

Posted on: Wednesday, 1 April 2009, 07:00 CDT

MEF Calls for Industry to Agree on Pricing Models that Fuel the Growth of Texting Services

LAS VEGAS, April 1 /PRNewswire/ -- The Mobile Entertainment Forum (MEF), leading advocates for the mobile entertainment industry (http://www.m-e-f.org), today announced the results of a survey assessing the impact of an anticipated increase on carrier tariffs for mobile terminated (MT) SMS text messages, expected to become effective this spring. The survey collected responses from U.S.-based aggregators, content publishers, service providers and carriers, in order to identify suggested SMS rate structures that would be sustainable for all members of the SMS value chain.

"Carriers and content marketers must align to reach a reasonable agreement around SMS valuation," said Jim Beddows, chair, MEF Americas. "If the cost-per-thousand of page impressions (CPM) established for mobile terminated SMS messages is set too high, it may ultimately cause service providers to eliminate campaigns, effectively reducing data service use in general."

According to the survey results, the carrier respondents indicated the change of the SMS tariff to between $15 CPM (1.5 cents per MT SMS) to $20 CPM (2 cents per MT SMS), would be reasonable to cover the associated costs for provisioning the short-code services. At the same time, aggregator, content publisher and service provider respondents indicated that a sustainable CPM surcharge for their services would need to be significantly lower - roughly between $2.50 CPM and $4.29 CPM. The maximum CPM that these latter respondents indicated that they could bear would be between $5.00 and $6.47.

"The industry must be mindful that all stakeholders (carrier, aggregator, buyer and publisher) need to share in an average $10 CPM (or $0.01 per SMS) to sustain a business model," says Gary Schwartz, CEO of Impact Mobile. "We have an opportunity to keep the SMS ecosystem vibrant if all parties can work from this premise."

About Mobile Entertainment Forum (MEF)

The Mobile Entertainment Forum was formed in 2000 to represent companies throughout the entire mobile entertainment value chain. As the global trade association of the mobile media industry, MEF works on behalf of its diverse membership to drive mobile entertainment adoption, shape regulation and deliver competitive advantage to its members.

With global headquarters in London, a Hollywood-based Americas secretariat, an Asian chapter in Hong Kong and the newly expanded EMEA branch, MEF's network of members represents a veritable 'Who's Who' of mobile entertainment businesses and entrepreneurs. For more information and a full list of members please visit:

www.m-e-f.org http://www.m-e-f.org

SOURCE Mobile Entertainment Forum

Source: PR Newswire

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