79% of UK mobile email users would accept ad-funded service

Now, this is an insightful piece of information I picked up from email giant, Critical Path:

Critical Path, a leading provider of messaging software and services, has today published research revealing that 79% of mobile phone users in the UK, Germany, Italy, Spain and the US would accept advertisements attached to email messages if the mobile email service was free. 62% of those surveyed said they are interested in using mobile email services, even though they do not currently take advantage of these services. The research was carried out by an independent agency, Vanson Bourne, on behalf of Critical Path.

The research, which shows consumers’ interest in next generation services and a tolerance of advertising models, should make interesting reading to mobile phone operators looking to drive adoption. 58% of consumers said they would try a new data service if it was free. In contrast, only 5% said they would be encouraged to try a service if a friend recommended it, suggesting that referral programmes may not be the best route for driving adoption. The survey also pointed out that 98% of consumers cited cost as a reason for not trying or using new mobile data services in the past.

Right now, I pay Vodafone somewhere in the region of 19 pounds per month for my Blackberry mobile email service. (9 pounds more per month than I was paying o2, but you know… )

How much would Vodafone be able to earn from me if I was, instead, accepting targeted mobile advertising from them, across the month? Would the revenue equal the fee I pay at the moment? Or, could it potentially vastly exceed it? I wonder.

I wondered a lot. Then I thought I might as well call Critical Path and find out a little bit more about why they did the survey in the first place — and a little bit more about their Memova mobile email service. I quickly got on the phone to the Nikki Gore, Critical Path’s Vice President, Marketing. If you recall, we’ve covered the Memova mobile email service regularly here on SMS Text News — the brilliance with Memova being that it’s device agnostic: It doesn’t matter what your consumers are using as a handset, if it’s semi modern (i.e. it’s got an email client or the ability to receive texts/MMS, then you can have Memova mobile email).

Critical Path do a lot of work helping operators look at the various different billing models and packages that they could offer their consumers — including the possibility of ad-funded mobile email.

Nikki explained that, “Since we’re not competing with mobile operators, we can offer them our experience with other global customers on what’s worked, what hasn’t worked and best practices.”

That’s got to be a heavy ask, has it not, Nikki, I asked her — Mobile operators being flexible on their billing structures?

I could hear her smiling on the phone as she recognised that mobile operators certainly do have “An entrenched way of working,” but, she continued, “Many operators are now exploring advertising as an alternative revenue stream.”

That excites me. I talked to SMS Text News contributor, Mr Operator, about this issue just last night. It’s “Quite probably years away,” he says, “But it’s something a lot of operators are looking at seriously.”

I agreed big time with Nikki when she declared that, “Cost is the biggest barrier for consumers to try mobile email. There are lots of possibilities. It’s important for operators to set appropriate expectation as to what ‘free means’ in the context of ad-funded services.”

I was nodding away at this point on the phone, thinking of Vodafone and my 19 pounds per month. How much would I like to avoid paying that? And how many ads — or what kind of ads would I tolerate to get the service ‘free’?

“Operators might give customers the choice to accept ad-funded services, or perhaps an opt out, or a blend,” Aye, I think, that might work for me. “Operators,” she continued, “might offer the service for free but deliver an advertisement on the bottom of every mail. Or every five mails, or similar. In all the conversations with operators we’re suggesting that it’s critical to offer the consumer a choice.”

Here, here. Agreed. I might like the concept of free but, well, the ads might end up bugging me so much that 19 quid might be perfectly fine in reality. If you’re an operator looking for mobile email, give Nikki a call about Memova — I’ve got her number (ewan@smstextnews.com).

While I had Nikki on the phone I thought I’d ask her about ad-funded MVNO success story, Blyk.

“What do you think of them?” I asked her.

“I think their model is very interesting. It’s clearly a pioneering approach, not just about one application such as mobile email, but about your entire service experience being ad-funded. It’s smart to have targeted a segment of the market that is more tolerant to the ad-funded experience.” (As SMS Text News’ BlykWatch can attest).