With internet advertising firmly established, all eyes now turned toward cell phones and their “enormous” potential, according to some.

Beside their material advantages, cell phones possess a weight advantage as well: in one respect at least, they’re bringing the United States and France together. On the subject of cell phone advertising, Maurice Lévy, board chairman at Publicis, openly declares in the media that “it’s the French Revolution of advertising…the most extraordinary medium being developed today.” His competitor, meanwhile, Andrew Robertson, CEO of BBDO Worldwide (Omnicom Group) is also brimming. “Very soon, the most important and singular medium people carry with them will be their cell phone,” he says. “It will be beside them all day long. It’s quite obviously the instrument of convergence people have been speaking of for years now.”

Was Jean-Marie Messier, ex-head of Vivendi and apostle of such convergence, along with a strategy for systematically unifying pipes and content, a man before his time? The debate will go on for a long time to come. Yet one fact remains: with the 3G revolution, cell phones, like the Internet boosted by ADSL, are gaining the status of “supramedia,” bringing together all the so-called traditional media. You can now watch the 8-o’clock news whenever you feel like it, listen to NPR or BBC Radio, read the latest headlines and send off an e-mail all with your cell phone. Hardly surprising that advertisers, who only months ago viewed cell phones with the same skepticism as they did the Internet three years ago, now include them in their media plans: the arrival of content from traditional advertising media (TV, radio, etc.) onto cell phones and the fact that access to quality content cannot be financed exclusively by consumers, have moved things in this direction. In the United States, the Yankee Group estimates that advertising investment in cell phones (via hypertext links, clickable fixed or animated banners, keywords, etc.) should reach the $2-billion mark by 2010, or 1% of total advertising expenditures. And the group forecasts a minimum of 5% by 2015.
And French off-track betting company Pari Mutuel Urbain (PMU), the first of its kind to advertise on cable and satellite in 2000 and on the Internet in late 2003, has now moved to cell phones. Just a click on the research engine Gallery shared by operators Orange, SFR and Bouygues, and bettors can access the PMU’s campaigns. “After investing in the Net, we decided to pay greater attention to everything related to multimedia, which provides new opportunities of attracting new customers,” PMU Communications Director Françoise Toussaint says.

In France, Coca-Cola put cell phones at the center of a media reminder campaign orchestrated this summer by Wieden & Kennedy.

Not that traditional media have lost their luster; a nostalgic hardliner brought in 4 million euros last year betting on the Minitel, a proto-internet service dating back to the early ’80s. But on the Net today, bettors are younger (67% under 50, compared to an overall average of 59%) and more frequently male (80% are men, compared to an overall average of 60%). However, the new customers recruited on the Net and cell phones are not the only factors behind PMU’s shift in strategy. “From the moment we offered the opportunity of betting on one’s cell phone, it made sense for us to follow that logic to the end and continue to advertise in that medium,” Toussaint says. Cell phones, she adds: “not only provide accessibility, but instantaneity and simplicity as well.”

Beware of intrusive media

Cell phones, moreover, possess one asset the Net really doesn’t: targeted advertising that only reaches cell phone users who have given prior consent. This protects customers from oversolicitation and the cell phone itself from becoming an intrusive medium. Little by little, the advertising landscape is changing, and the allocation of the PMU’s advertising budget attests to this.

Of course, nearly half the budget (30 million euros out of negotiation) continues to be invested in television, along with 20-25% in radio and 10% in print media. But the new media already absorb 5% of the total budget (2/3 of which is for the Internet and 1/3 for cell phones).Toussaint predicts, moreover, “a considerable increase for 2007.” Similarly, firms such as Nike, Apple, Marionnaud, Société Générale, Peugeot, L’Oréal, Adidas, McDonald’s, Total, and Nestlé all now advertise on cell phones. Like in the Wild West, new actors continually rise up and position themselves in this emerging market, building everything from the ground up.

Founded in early 2000 and focused on cell phone communication since 2003, ScreenTonic figures as the first cell phone advertising firm in Europe. With offices in both Paris and London, it’s one of the few companies to offer complete commercialization and advertising management solutions on cell phones and even boasts its own platform, Stamp. Coca-Cola— that’s them. The PMU—them again. And others have rapidly seized upon the market potential, such as Laurent Vermot-Gauchy, graduate of the prestigious "Ecole des Mines" (French School of Mining Engineering), who launched the firm Crickee in December 2005. His proposal? “Build a new Skype for the SMS world,” he reveals. More concretely, this means offering free text messaging by accepting advertising. The main target audience: teens. And keep two figures in mind: a billion text messages exchanged each month in France, and an estimated two billion cell phones in existence throughout the world. Coca-Cola, Reebok with Thierry Henry, and the “118,000” directory already work with Crickee, in partnership with ScreenTonic. And while Vermot-Gauchy admits his goals may be “gigantic,” “so is the market potential,” he explains.

Véronique Richebois

• 49 million cell phones in France.
• 81% of the French population own a cell phone.
• 94% of the 15-24 age group use a cell phone, as well as 67% of those 50-64.
• 60% of those polled say it’s worse to lose one’s cell phone than one’s wallet or keys.
• 1 billion text messages are exchanged each month in France.
• 33 million MMS messages were exchanged in December 2005.

Source: Arcep, AFMM