Wednesday, July 18, 2007

New MMA documents

The MMA has released a new version of its Consumer Best Practices Guidelines, which can be downloaded here. The key changes are:

  • Use of 'Free' has been relaxed. It used to be the case that the word FREE could not be associated in any way with a premium billed campaign (e.g. 'sign up now and receive the first 5 alerts FREE'). This is now possible, with certain restrictions.

  • Marketing to children (anyone under the age of 13). The MMA requires content providers to adhere to COPPA, and also imposes additional restrictions in how mobile campaigns are being promoted.

  • Restrictions on use of single opt-in for Participation TV programs has been made more specific. Restrictions include maximum price ($1.49), transaction-only billing, and use of both verbal and visual pricing instructions during the call-to-action.

  • The Best Practices document now also includes guidelines for WAP services and IVR based opt-in mechanisms.

  • Further restrictions on running chat programs.


The MMA has also released two interesting documents providing some background information about running off-deck services and creating successful mobile marketing campaigns.

While these documents are certainly useful, it is good to keep in mind that these are 'sales documents', mainly written to promote the use of mobile services, hence not necessarily very objective, and most definitely overly optimistic in describing the overall market potential. One example: the mobile marketing case studies tend to be very long on descriptions, but very short on actual results. Hmmm.... now, why would that be ?

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