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Deloitte is sharing some “interesting” numbers from their new “The State of Media Democracy” survey. Billed as a “‘reality check’ on how American consumers between 13 and 75 years of age are using media and technology today – and what they want in the future,” the study reserves a special section for mobile entitled “Cell Phones as Entertainment” as it breaks down consumption of user-generated, traditional and mobile media across four key generations: Millennials (13 – 24), Gen X (25-41), Baby Boomers (25-41) and Matures (61-75).

Some highlights from the piece:

• “Cell Phones are Surging as Entertainment Devices.” (Yes I said “Hype” for a reason). 36% of US mobile users surveyed stated that they use their mobile phone for “entertainment” (up from 24% in just six months). The Millennials reported the highest activity in this area, with 62% reporting mobile entertainment usage (up from 46% in six months), with Gen X second at 47% usage (up from 29% in six months). It’s not entirely clear how Deloitte is defining “entertainment” (they don’t define this in their release), but surely cannot be referring to video services, or even downloadable music – as these numbers are seriously at odds with nearly most (if not all) major research data covering this market. Perhaps “Entertainment” is referring to gaming, video, music, and “entertainment-related” mobile web usage. Question: If I’m talking on my mobile and my friend tells me a joke, does that count as “Cell Phone Entertainment?”
• Both Millennials and Gen X’ers display nearly identically activity in mobile internet usage, at 45% and 46%, respectively. Again, these numbers seem very high when viewed against similar studies and other industry data from “mobile specialist” research firms like M:Metrics and Nielsen Mobile (Telephia)
• Mobile “picture taking” on the rise. 63% of mobile users reported using a mobile phones for photo capture; 80% of Millenials and 75% of Gen X. These numbers seem somewhat elevated but in general seem realistic and corroborated by similar studies and marketplace observations.

Overall, I must say that I am extremely skeptical of Deloitte’s latest findings, an opinion shared by others in the US mobile marketing space. Both Carlo Longino of mocoNews and Steve Smith of MediaPost cast similar doubt on the validity of some of the numbers reported in the survey, primarily concerning the dubious claims concerning US mobile video penetration (20%? – is that a typo?!). Ultimately, the fact that the Deloitte survey promotes data consistently and significantly above earlier findings would suggest a overenthusiastic (to use a nice word) research bias, and whether intentional or not – unfortunately puts all of its findings into doubt.

According to Mobile Marketer, a daily mobile marketing industry newsletter that started appearing in my inbox yesterday and that claims to be “the news leader in mobile marketing, media and commerce,” there was a 22 percent increase “in the number of consumers who received SMS text ads in the United States”, (3Q Year of Year) garnering “an 11 percent response rate.”Mobile Marketer cites M:Metrics as a source, although I found no mention of the third quarter data among its public releases.

Giving Mobile Marketer the benefit of the doubt (which may be a bit of a stretch considering the publication’s first issue featured a self-serving column written by an email services firm that felt more like a sales pitch than an “opinion” piece), I have some difficulty with the overall concept of “SMS Advertising.”SMS is by definition a “pull” marketing channel, meaning that all SMS engagements are user-initiated. If, after the initial engagement, the user receives a marketing message contained within a response message, I would hardly classify that as “advertising.” By most accounts an “Advertising” message would involve some sort of “public broadcast” to a large group of people. If I had to classify this type of marketing, it would probably fall somewhere between Direct Response, Sponsorship or even CRM (if there’s ongoing messaging activity to a list of mobile “opt-ins”).

Why split hairs? Well, for one thing, its important for the Mobile Marketing industry as a whole to get behind a set of standards and terms that are easily understood by the overall marketing community at large. By incorrectly calling this type of activity “advertising,” clients are getting misaligned perceptions about the medium and its uses, incorrectly thinking that they can “blast out a SMS message to the public,” advertising-style.

Interestingly enough, there are some genuine SMS Advertising campaigns going on in the US market. Who, you ask, would have the nerve to ignore MMA best practices and blast out SMS messages without first getting permission to do so? That would be the only group with no fear of the carriers coming in and shutting them down… The carriers themselves! That’s right, “operators are the main source of SMS ads,” states Mark Burk of M:Metrics.

I think we can all agree that unsolicited SMS ads are not the future of mobile marketing. That said, if we are to speak of “Mobile Advertising,” lets be careful of what exactly we are talking about. There are many legimate forms of mobile advertising, from mobile web banners, to mobile video spots, and even in-game ad units. All are legitimate advertising channels because the user has accepted these mediums as ad-supported, and while consumers certainly don’t welcome (most) ads with open arms, they put up with them so long as they don’t dominate the experience.

The same cannot truly be said for mobile messaging.