sms

Interactive mobile marketing company, mobile messaging solutions (mms), said Tuesday that it has been working with Univision Interactive Media, the digital division of Spanish-language broadcaster, Univision (which claims to be the largest Spanish-language media company in the US), to power a range of premium mobile-based interactive TV services--including voting, sweepstakes, polling and trivia--for such high-profile shows as "Sabado Gigante," "Despierta America," and "Escandalo TV." The company says that it will continue to work with Univision to expand in-show mobile interactivity on these and other top Univision programs.

The Association for Interactive Media and Entertainment (AIME)--a UK trade body that bills itself as representing "the interactive media business where customers use their telephones, televisions or computers to access, interact with and pay for information and entertainment"--is trumpeting the success of its lobbying efforts in convincing regulator, PhonepayPlus, to ease restrictions on premium SMS-based interactive TV voting that were imposed as a result of the UK's so-called "participation-TV scandal" (note: the scandal erupted back in 2007, when it came to light that broadcasters were inviting viewers to participate in premium-rate SMS-driven competitions that they had no chance of winning; broadcasters were subsequently prohibited from using SMS voting on their sho

Here are some other interactive TV-related stories we didn't have room for in this issue:

Here are some other interactive TV-related stories we didn't have room for in this issue:

SinglePoint, a company which specializes in mobile-based interactive and participation TV, and which last year was chosen by NBC Universal to provide mobile interactive TV services across a broad range of its programming and channels, said Wednesday that its SingleBrand Ad Marketplace, which launched less than a year ago, is gaining significant momentum. According to the company, the total number of unique users for the service has reached 11 million, and SMS advertising has doubled each month since its launch.

Integra5, a Massachusetts-based company that specializes in technologies for converged services, said Monday that it is changing its name to MediaFriends, which is also the brand of a suite of social media applications that it launched last summer (note: for more on the MediaFriends application suite, see the article published on itvt.com, September 29th 2008; as well as the audio interview with Integra5/MediaFriends president and CEO, Meredith Flynn-Ripley, located at http://tinyurl.com/lu3t8m).

AT&T says that viewers interacting with the recently concluded eighth season of the interactive TV reality series, "American Idol," sent 178 million text messages over its network--the highest total for any season and more than double the 78 million messages that it reported last year.

Telegent, a Silicon Valley-based company that offers single-chip solutions for mobile TV, and Arima, a Taiwanese mobile handset ODM company, announced Tuesday that Arima has enhanced its design for a Telegent-powered mobile handset capable of receiving free-to-air TV, so that the design now allows users to send and receive SMS messages while watching live, free broadcast TV.

SinglePoint--a Bellevue, Washington-based company which specializes in mobile-based interactive and participation TV, and which earlier this year was chosen by NBC Universal to provide mobile interactive TV services across a broad range of its programming and channels (note: according to research conducted by Nielsen, the company processed 84% of interactive TV transactions initiated by mobile text message users on the top four US carriers in the second half of 2007)--has launched a service, dubbed the SingleBrand Ad Marketplace, which it is billing as "the first real-time mobile advertising marketplace for SMS and MMS ad campaigns generated by popular interactive TV shows on major networks." According to the company, the new Ad Marketplace, which is part of its recentl