Mobile marketing platform

Madison Avenue startup Anomaly offers clients a lot more than just ads.

By Susanna Hamner, Business 2.0 Magazine writer-reporter

(Business 2.0 Magazine) -- According to market research firm Informa Telecoms & Media, companies will spend more than $11 billion by 2011 to advertise on mobile phones.

That's one reason Johnson's staff includes a team of six mobile-technology specialists and software developers. While they have already launched a series of mobile ads for Nike (Charts) and ESPN, Johnson has bigger ambitions for the third screen.

Anomaly recently launched the first shopping platform enabling consumers to buy products via text messaging. It got the attention of PayPal, which linked up with Anomaly to launch its text-to-buy service.

Anomaly has since created a more advanced version: ShopText, which allows U.S. mobile-phone customers who come across a magazine ad to text-message a number to buy the product instantly, usually in return for a big discount.

Since ShopText launched in September, ads placed in Lucky and Cosmo Girl have generated more than 1,000 transactions for products from Procter & Gamble (Charts) and others.

Anomaly won't disclose revenue figures but says it receives a licensing fee and takes a small cut of each sale. "A shift is occurring in the overall adoption of texting," says Ed Kountz, JupiterResearch senior analyst for payments. "It's got the potential to take off."

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Most stock quote data provided by BATS. Market indices are shown in real time, except for the DJIA, which is delayed by two minutes. All times are ET. Disclaimer. Morningstar: © 2018 Morningstar, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Factset: FactSet Research Systems Inc. 2018. All rights reserved. Chicago Mercantile Association: Certain market data is the property of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. and its licensors. All rights reserved. Dow Jones: The Dow Jones branded indices are proprietary to and are calculated, distributed and marketed by DJI Opco, a subsidiary of S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC and have been licensed for use to S&P Opco, LLC and CNN. Standard & Poor's and S&P are registered trademarks of Standard & Poor's Financial Services LLC and Dow Jones is a registered trademark of Dow Jones Trademark Holdings LLC. All content of the Dow Jones branded indices © S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC 2018 and/or its affiliates.