Blog

We have been meeting with the leading telecom and media analysts in Europe on our recent release related to Goldman Sachs and IFIC joining as new investors, and our country expansion starting with the Netherlands using the Vodafone network.

We have also been discussing our recent advertising results. The average 29% response rate across 498 campaigns ran until January 24th is a result that gets many people asking: how?

In summary: relevance of all ad communications, delivery based on the simple and familiar user experience, and Blyk’s unique media environment in combination make the Blyk Media effective. In fact, most young people don’t see these conversations as advertising but as information they would like to have.

To put the 29% response rate into a perspective: typically media delivers 2% at its best, and cold mobile campaigns 3-6% growing to 13-20% if in-depth profiling data is used, as referred by the DMA Chair Nick Fuller last year.

Marek Pawlowski from MEX recently summarized this quite well: “Much of the success can be attributed to Blyk’s approach to the mobile advertising experience. They use a medium with which the users are already very familiar - messaging - thereby avoiding much of the confusion and pricing uncertainty around clicking through to mobile web-sites. The advertisements are sent as a text or picture message, and are designed to be two-way conversations. Users are invited to respond with a simple reply, e.g. Would you like to receive more information about our discounts on summer holidays? ^Y/N”

The ad format – SMS and MMS messaging used for conversations between brands and members – is currently active in Blyk with 55 advertisers across 14 industries. The simple but rich building blocks are used to create variety and breadth of campaigns to create awareness, build relationships and drive sales. The applied formats are text, picture and video with sound and animation when required. And most importantly, not only rich in pixels, but more so to be rich in interaction and context: highest response rates are generated when relevance and flow of interaction come together in the unique Blyk Media environment - that is difficult or impossible replicate anywhere else.

Finally, and most importantly, young Blyk members are excited and want to join one of the fastest growing youth media in the UK. Blyk is well on track to reach 100,000 members and to become a significant youth media in the UK in its first year of operations. The best feedback we have received so far – unprompted and via our research lab shift6.net - is that the Blyk form of media really works for young people.