Provides new insight into emerging opportunity for marketers

Singapore: March 08, 2010 – The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) (www.mmaglobal.com) today announced the publication of a whitepaper about the marketing and advertising opportunities and considerations associated with the growing area of ring-back tones (RBTs). Created by MMA members 4play Digital Workshop, Comverse, Livewire Mobile, Ringco Ltd, and Xipto Inc, the whitepaper is designed to provide marketers worldwide with insight into this emerging area and to guide them through the usage of RBT advertising campaigns that ensure a positive, rewarding experience for consumers.

The whitepaper deals with a number of areas, including:

Market size and growth trends;

• Benefits of marketing with RBTs;
• Subscriber controls;
• Duration, ad-copy and frequency of RBTs;
• Purchase models and advertiser settlements;
• Campaign setup; and
• Metrics

“Although ring-back tones have been repurposed by operators for almost a decade, it is only recently that marketers are able to take advantage of this opportunity. With more than 3 billion mobile phones in use worldwide, and approximately 12 billion inbound calls each day (according to Nielsen Mobile), 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 white paper to provide insights into harvesting the potential of this new emerging area of focus as a marketing channel.” said Rohit Dadwal, Managing Director, APAC, Mobile Marketing Association.

In Asia, advertising on RBT has been offered by Turkcell Turkey (service name ‘Tonla Kazan’), KTF South Korea (service name ‘Save-Ring’), Vodafone Essar India (service name ‘adRBT’), Airtel India (service name ‘Hello Tunes Lite’) and China Mobile China (service name ‘Zhao Cai Ling’). “The biggest advantage RBT advertising offers advertisers is the wide reach, far beyond the network and the opt-in subscribers,” said Ofer Razon, Director of Marketing, Messaging & Mobile Advertising, Comverse.

“For example, a Tier 1 operator in India, with a 70 million-subscriber base with each subscriber receiving an average of 10 incoming calls per day, a penetration rate of 4 to 5 per cent on AdRBT makes it the single most powerful marketing medium on the mobile handset,” Razon said.

”Based on the volume of inbound calls worldwide, the opportunity for advertising and marketing via ring-back tones is immense,” stated Nicolas Arauz, Founder and President of Xipto Inc. “There is clear scope for marketers to benefit from the idle time with a captive audience, and for mobile subscribers to be able to reap real rewards. By creating this educational whitepaper, we wanted to explore the opportunities and provide guidance for those new to the market.”

In India, several leading consumer brands have rolled out RBT campaigns. “There are 500 million mobile subscribers in India and about 20 per cent of these subscribers use RBT. The Indian market therefore has great potential for such audio-based advertising. At StratosHear, we have implemented several such campaigns for consumer brands and received tremendous results,” said Vinay Kumar, Founding CEO, StratosHear.

The Marketing with Ring-Back Tones Whitepaper is available to download from the MMA website. Please visit www.mmaglobal.com/policies/education for more information.

About the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA)
The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) is the premier global non-profit trade association established to lead the growth of mobile marketing and its associated technologies. The MMA is an action-oriented organization designed to clear obstacles to market development, establish mobile media guidelines and best practices for sustainable growth, and evangelize the use of the mobile channel. The more than 700 member companies, representing over forty countries around the globe, include all members of the mobile media ecosystem. The Mobile Marketing Association’s global headquarters are located in the United States and it has regional chapters including North America (NA), Europe (EUR), Latin America (LATAM), Middle East & Africa (MEA) and Asia Pacific (APAC) branches. For more information, please visit www.mmaglobal.com.

Press Contacts

Suzanne Yap
Rice Communications on behalf of MMA
M: +65 8522 3221
E: suzanne.yap@ricecomms.com

Shruti Soni
Rice Communications on behalf of MMA
M: +91 98733 54750
E: shruti.soni@ricecomms.com