Text messaging is a new, yet already widely adopted tool for effectively reaching your audience.

• The mobile phone has become a primary means of communication, not only for voice and text-messaging, but for digital services, email, digital photos, navigation and more
• Worldwide over 350 billion sms/textmessages are sent EACH MONTH
• Over 15% of these messages (according to the Yankee Group) are classified as commercial or marketing messages

 
75% of U.S. households own at least one cell-phone & 90% of the cell-phones are text-messaging capable.  

• 80% of 13-24 year olds text / 63% of 18-27 year olds text / 31% of 28-39 year old text / 18% of 40-49 year olds text
• 3 in 4 mobile phone owners use text-messaging at least occasionally
• sms/texting is a weekly event for more than 50% of mobile phone owners
• male / female usage of text-messaging is generally even, with usage skewing only slightly heavier with males
• income skew of text messaging is not known, however, it has been demonstrated that over 50% of Tier 1 carrier subscribers do carry major credit cards, indicating ability to make purchases as needed

Cell-phones are increasingly web-capable, 45% of 18-26 year olds have mobile browser capability, 26% overall  [Over 44% of people surveyed recently said that web capability will be a primary factor in choosing a new cell-phone]

Use of text-messaging and mobilty solutions by advertisers will continue to grow rapidly.

• By 2008, 89% of brands will use text and multimedia messaging to reach their audience, with nearly one-third planning to spend in excess of 10% of marketing budgets on the medium.
  
• In five years over half of brands (52%) expect to spend between 5% and 25% of total marketing budget on mobile marketing. 
  

qtags text uses a short-code (5 digits vs. the 10 in a phone number) and KEYWORDS.

Choose a KEYWORD and display it on ads with a call-to-action like:  Join our Group, text 'keyword' to 78247

In the image upper right, the word ‘hire’ is the KEYWORD & 78247 is the short-code

qtags text messages are standard rate…meaning there is no charge to the user other than the charge from their mobile carrier