ILoop Mobile is merging with Lenco Mobile to bring MMS campaigns at scale to marketers in the United States.

Lenco offers rich media-based solutions to both carriers and brands in Africa, Asia, Australia and Latin America. Under the terms of the deal, iLoop will merge into a subsidiary of Lenco, with iLoop?s stakeholders receiving a combination of cash and securities valued at approximately $42 million.

?We believe that the market for MMS in the U.S. and the use of MMS is a huge untapped market,? said Michael Levinsohn, CEO of Lenco Mobile, Santa Barbara, CA.

?In the U.S., nobody has yet been able to deliver MMS campaigns to scale,? he said. ?Getting 3 to 5 million messages out in an hour is still a challenge.?

Better reach
Lenco?s solution provides advertisers and wireless carriers the means to deliver large, high-volume campaigns through rich-media messaging with highly personalized content, optimized for each different device. 

For advertisers, this means they can deliver a highly engaging user experience while taking advantage of the pervasive reach of mobile.

In comparison, mobile applications and sites offer a rich experience but, they do not have the reach of messaging. 

Lenco has worked with large retailers, auto manufacturers and financial services firms to deliver large-scale MMS campaigns.

The deal brings together two complementary businesses. While Lenco has had significant success with MMS around the world, its U.S. business is limited. ILoop has a strong U.S. customer base that is looking for MMS campaign services.

?Across our customer base, the demand is high for MMS,? said Matt Harris, CEO of iLoop, San Jose, CA.

?The questions we?ve been getting back are when can we do this and can we do it at scale,? he said.

?So if the feedback we are getting from our customers is consistent across the entire market, then I think it is growing grow very fast.

?If you look at markets like Singapore and South Africa, once the uptake for MMS starts, it is a very sharp growth curve.?

The merger will let iLoop offer its customers the technical resources and the necessary expertise to develop large-scale MMS campaigns.

Lenco also offers a service for wireless carriers that significantly increases the number of MMS messages they can send.

Several pilot campaigns are already underway, with the first production campaigns planned for the fourth quarter of this year. 

?One of the big growth opportunities is mobile financial statements that is delivered into the handset and looks exactly the same as a PDF file,? Mr. Levinsohn said. ?Mobile is a very efficient channel for delivering financial information.?

Final Take
Chantal Tode is associate editor on Mobile Marketer, New York