Flirtomatic passes half a million registrations

Flirtomatic CEO Mark Curtis warns that the mobile advertising market is stifling potential growth as a result of lack of transparency over usage rates.

As cross-platform social network Flirtomatic passes 500,000 registrations - with a quarter of these on mobile - its CEO, Mark Curtis, has issued a warning that the mobile advertising market is stifling potential growth.

While recent media coverage has hyped the potential for advertising on the mobile internet, there is little standard usage data available with which brands can make informed decisions.

"Almost no mobile content owners are currently divulging their usage rates," said Curtis.

"This makes it very difficult for content owners themselves to benchmark their usage rates, let alone brands deciding where best to advertise.

"We're currently seeing an acceleration in mobile registration against that on PC.

"What's more, Flirtomatic received 110 million WAP impressions in October 2007.

"This compares very favourably to the web, however, it is currently nigh on impossible to compare these figures with any other mobile content owners".

The Mobile Data Association currently releases monthly figures on the overall number of people using WAP but there is no consistent measurement of specific usage rates.

Many mobile content owners are unwilling to release statistics.

"We are, of course, very excited to have generated such high engagement with Flirtomatic - both measured by half a million registrations and the very high mobile page view levels", added Curtis.

"For us and other companies trying to build the case for mobile advertising it's now crucial to buttress early success with industry benchmarking.

"The mobile web has still further to go to reach the required level; mobile content owners must begin to become more transparent with regard to usage rates, in order to engage the advertisers and major brands now actively showing interest in the mobile web".

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