Blyk hits target 5 months early, 100,000 youth members VERY happy with mobile ads

This is also some major news. Blyk announced last week that they had reached the 100,000 subscriber level in the UK. For those who do not read our blog regularly, Blyk is the radical UK youth-oriented mobile service provider, who offer free calls and free SMS text messages, to youth users (absolute age limit 16-24, membership by invitation only) in exchange of receiving up to 6 mobile advertisements per day. This is the ultimate service and community for Generation C. (and like they say at Blyk, the whole company was set up using the principles of our book Communities Dominate Brands, so thank you Blyk for that endorsement.)

First. Blyk said that for the UK their target was 100,000 subscribers in the first year. They did it in seven months. Impressive.

Secondly, they have grown from some 40 major advertisers to over 120. This speaks of very solid business.

But third, and most impressive - Blyk also announced that their average response rates for their ads are 29%. WOW - this is ENORMOUS !!!!  Consider that this is for a company that has been bombarding their customers on a daily basis with mobile phone ads. Every day. Yet the customers hit 29% response rates. We'd be happy to get one tenth that response rate in internet based ad campaigns!  29% consistently after a deluge of mobile ads. This is amazing.

And fourth, as I told you in my review of the Forum Oxford Conference where Blyk's Jonathan MacDonald was presenting - that the biggest complaint Blyk users have, is that they want MORE of the ads !!!  Their concept is validated and potent. Most potent!

This is the genesis of "User-generated advertising". Blyk is honestly changing advertising as we know it, not only re-inventing mobile ads. As I've spoken over the past two weeks in Athens, Moscow, Oxford and Hong Kong - each time the biggest topic of interest was how does this Blyk model work. What is user-generated advertising, and are these numbers for real.

100,000 users say it is for real. 29% response rate at Blyk - yes they are for real. And the users? They don't detest these ads - they really do want MORE of them. If you are in any way involved with advertising, you have to understand Blyk and what they are doing now.

Congratulations Blyk !!!!  This is a major milestone.