ChaCha answers MMS call

ChaCha, the increasingly popular service that provides free answers to questions asked by users via text messages, today announced it has expanded its capabilities to include multimedia messaging service offerings. The new MMS feature will support videos, including movie trailers, and images such as coupons and logos, on nearly all mobile phone models.
“This is a big deal for both our advertisers and users,” said Scott Jones, CEO of ChaCha. “Many marketers view sight, sound and motion as major enhancements to their brand’s message, and we are now in the ideal position to support these objectives in mobile channels.
“Smartphones have whetted the consumer’s appetite for mobile, rich-media content,” continued Jones. “MMS allows media to finally reach virtually all mobile phones in a way that advertisers can have their messages seen and heard.”
The company said it plans to offer a variety of ways for brands to use its MMS offering, including showing a coupon for immediate local redemption using barcodes; providing users with a text response code within a text message that launches video when consumers respond; and deploying existing rich media content such as sports highlights, video ads, movie trailers, interview clips, music videos, logos, photos, contests and more. When a user asks a question, marketers can insert rich-media ads in response to specific questions or keywords, said the company.
ChaCha said roughly 15 million users use its service, which answers, on average, 2 million questions each day.