Advertisers love the idea of mobile as a new marketing channel. “That’s crap,” says Impact Mobile founder Gary Schwartz. “Mobile is not a channel, it’s something you add to make things better. We’re focused on turning the phone into a mobile mouse.”

By Scott Valentine

Can you put success on speed dial? Toronto’s Impact Mobile is trying to do just that with a platform that helps advertisers and retailers connect to mobile consumers.

The private company was founded by Gary Schwartz in 2002. Schwartz, a self-confessed serial entrepreneur, has a long track record of successful mobile initiatives both domestically and abroad.

“Five years ago, I was in a weak b2b market,” he says. “It seemed at the time that the carriers were starting to get together and play nicely and I decided there was a good chance for a b2c mobile play in Canada.”

Build once. Sell forever.

While SMS marketing has been around for a decade, Impact’s approach is to offer a turn-key, end-to-end platform that focuses on technology that complements a business plan, rather than content creation.

As a brand manager, all that’s demanded of you is numbers performance,” says Schwartz. “Mobile guys love to talk about innovation but it’s got to be more than cool. It has to be quantifiable and make the cash register go Ka-ching.

“There’s no money in running campaigns,” says Schwartz. “If you do that, you turn into an agency because you’re focused on professional services rather than building a scalable business.”

Instead, Impact focused on building a suite of products that was scalable and ‘self-serve’, and selling their toolkit to a broad range of customers.

“Like any company that wants to be successful, you have to build once and sell many times,” says Schwartz. “With that idea as the holy grail, we’ve focused on becoming a tech that allows clients to use our platform and our pipe to run their own service.”

Clickable, measurable and interactive

Most of Impact’s competitors are focused on monetizing mobile media.

“God bless’em,” says Schwartz. “I make a lot of money creating revenue too, but it’s a commodity business,” he says. “What’s not a commodity business is building out an interactive facility for these offline guys to make their media interactive.”

It’s true that the Canadian mobile media scene is getting a little crowded these days, but Schwartz isn’t trying to own the entire wireless landscape. Just the space between a client’s brand and your mobile device.

“We call it the lost mile,” he says. “Taking people from Point A to Point B and turning that SMS message into a phone number . . . driving the interaction to point-of-sale.”

JumpTXT Live – Impact’s core product offering – is an in event SMS toolkit for video screen integration. The JumpTXT solution provides a near real-time ability for delivering branded messaging and interaction opportunities; especially effective within closed environments.

Let’s say you’re sitting in your seat at the Leafs (better make that Red Wings) next playoff game.

On the Jumbotron is live video of a bunch of toothless players covered with scruffy whiskers. A moment later, you get hit on the hip with a sponsor-branded poll: Which player has the best playoff beard? By interacting, you’re pushed a mobile coupon for a dollar off a slice of pizza at the stadium’s concession stands. Entertainment, action, commercialization.

“We’ve become the standard for the sports and music sectors,” says Schwartz, rattling off an extensive list of clients, including 150 U.S. stadiums and arenas. “Raptors, Jays, The Staples Centre, The Galaxy . . . we have 93 per cent of the music market (through clients like House of Blues and Signatures Network)”

CPM: An old solution to a new problem

The fast-and-friendly nature of Impact’s plug-and-play toolkit, no more complex to deploy than an API, provides solutions for a whole spectrum of interactive mobile methods.

Previously, clients have used the JumpTXT platform for quick deployment of everything from fan polls to mobile coupons, in-event media, and pushes to point-of-sale systems.

Much of Impact’s BI and reach into the North American market is due to the company’s push to develop standards for the mobile industry, including a lead role with the Internet Advertising Bureau’s Mobile Advertising Committee, of which Schwartz is chair.

“I was thrown in a room with Google and Yahoo and Microsoft and they said, ‘It’s not marketing Gary. Mobile is about buying inventory and getting clicks,’” says Schwartz. “That part of the world is fixated on buying inventory that way because it’s easy to do.”

We’re taking the business-as-usual Cost Per Thousand model that companies are used to buying with and turning it into a mobile mouse,” he says. “That drives value and bridges the gap to where the brand wants to be”.

JumpTXT gets creative

Audience polling, interactive chat, content-pushing, live flirting with that cutie in Row 6 . . . if there’s an idea Impact’s clients have for how to use mobile in the context of their media, Shcwartz is happy to oblige.

“As a brand manager, all that’s demanded of you is numbers performance,” says Schwartz. “Mobile guys love to talk about innovation but it’s got to be more than cool. It has to be quantifiable and make the cash register go Ka-ching.”

Low-tech bling, high-end Ka-ching!

Compared to other Canadian mobiles such as MyThum, which builds mobile media, Extend, which wants to commercialize it, or Tira, which wants to make applications work on a range of devices, Impact’s solutions are decidedly low-tech. But that’s the genius of the company.

Impact sits at number five on the 2007 Deloitte and Touche Canadian Technology Fast 50 with 10,455 per cent revenue growth since 2002. Also, though Schwartz claims Impact has been “profitable since Day One,” Impact just accepted two million in debt financing from Wellington Financial.

“It’s a ramp, a way to a business extension,” says Schwartz. “If we’re borrowing, that means we can pay it back.”

Cashing in on mobile clicks

Impact seems well-situated to capitalize on its central position as both a front-of-mind mobile technology platform and as a key figure in establishing industry standards within the rich U.S. marketplace.

Long term, Impact may end-up as a smaller piece of a much larger end-to-end mobile media commercialization solution. But for right now, Schwartz is in an excellent place to ride the wireless wave into the future on a very old-school board.

“I know it sounds very boring but SMS is the mobile ‘click. It’s the first button and it’s the best . . . the only ubiquitous wireless standard,” he says. “If you don’t get the click first, there’s not going to be any ROI.”

And for those looking to incorporate mobile into their approach, Impact Mobile is all about making cash register and cellphones ring the same tune.