Advanced Telecom Services seeks a sales and marketing professional to sell its mobile marketing products in Canada.

Advanced Telecom Services, a 23-year-old business headquartered in Philadelphia, seeks a Canadian sales and marketing professional to sell its mobile marketing products throughout Canada. It is preferred that the successful candidate will be based in the Toronto, Ottawa, or Montreal regions, but candidates from other cities and regions will be considered.

Products include text message marketing, mobile websites, apps, and custom QR Codes. In addition, its legacy products include IVR service bureau services, including Canada 900 numbers andonline dating affiliate programs.

Primary contacts for our products are advertising agencies, advertisers, and media. Therefore, experience in working or calling on media and advertisers is preferred.

Successful candidate should be a mature individual with the ability to work independently out of a small office or home office.

Contact Bob Bentz at sales@advancedtele.com.

88.1% of smartphone owners in Canada use text messaging.

Key trends in the Canadian mobile market were released in a study by ComScore which gauged Canadian use of mobile devices in the month of September, 2011.

According to the study, 20.1 million Canadians age 13+ used mobile devices during the month.  Samsung was the top ranked OEM (original equipment manufacturer) with 25.2% of mobile subscribers in Canada.

Smartphone Platform Market Share

40% of Canadians who own mobile phones own smartphones, according to the ComScore study.  That’s up from 33% just six months ago.  RIM is the leader in Canada when it comes to smartphone ownership with 35.8% market share.  Google Android, however, is growing by leaps and bounds, as it doubled its market share to 25% in just the past six months.

Mobile Content Usage

Canadians don’t just talk on their mobile phones.  In fact, they do a heck of a lot more.  According to the study, 67.4% used text messaging.  18.1% of smartphone owners in Canada have scanned a QR Code.

199 million text messages are sent per day in Canada.

Over 99% of the Canadian population has access to a wireless network today.  Advanced wireless networks that support smartphones are available to over 96% of the country’s population.

At the end of the first quarter, 2011, 24.7 million mobile phones were active in Canada.  Mobile broadband subscribers total 5.7 million residents meaning that 24.2% of Canadian mobile subscribers have it.

In fact, half of all phone connections in Canada are now wireless as the number of cell phone only households continues to increase.  75% of all Canadian households have at least one cell phone connection.

And, those cell phone text messages certainly do add up; 199 million text messages are sent per day in Canada.

The standard rate phone call is free to the consumer and the premium rate phone call will cost the consumer, much like calling a 900 number from a landline phone does.

While starting a pound code number is not cheap (the initial investment is $3000), it is a way to access cell phone only households with your voice information.  Plus, its an easy way to charge the consumer for your premium information.

Most important, it’s a great way to charge your consumer that is on the go, like the billboard below that I saw while vacationing in Florida.

#LAW is a pound code service to dial a law firm in the States.

Santa Claus needs to go high tech.

North Pole –When you think about the greatest businessman of all-time, who comes to mind?

Ford?  Rockefeller?  Bill Gates?  Donald Trump?  Richard Branson?  Mark Zuckerberg?  Steve Jobs?

Give me a break.

The greatest businessman of all time is, without a doubt, Santa Claus.

8 Things That Santa Claus Does Better than Donald Trump

Think about it.  Santa’s customers return year after year.  He has a factory that churns out toys 24/7 with little overhead.  He has loyal and long tenured employees that work for near minimum wage.  Of course, there aren’t a lot of jobs in this tough global economy, so imagine how hard it is for vertically challenged elves these days.

Santa Claus has a promotions department that secures prime visibility in crowded malls and gets him grand marshal positions in parades all over the world.  He also has a publicity crew that writes songs, poems, and even produces movies and television shows with him as the star.  His stamina is amazing and there are no performance enhancing drugs in his body, unless you count the chocolate chip cookies!

He’s an advertising genius.  Just watch TV in December and see how many commercials he’s on.  I’ve seen him drinking Coca-Cola for years now and am still amazed how he can balance himself on that Norelco razor after all the junk food he eats!

And talk about customer service.  It’s the best in the world!  No waiting on hold to talk to his telemarketers “Ryan” from Sri Lanka.  He knows what you want, often without your even telling him.

The Biggest Mistakes Santa Claus Makes

But, sometimes I think Santa Claus is slipping a bit the past few years.  He hasn’t really embraced html5, social networking, apps, or cloud technology very well.

Santa doesn’t own an iPhone or an Android.  He thinks a Blackberry is a health food that he’d never dream of eating.

I think he’s one of only about 15 people in the world that don’t have a Facebook account.  I’m not sure if he knows how to Google anything.  His website isn’t optimized.  I’ve never seen him Tweet.  His Klout score is below 25.

His workers still use basic tools from the pre-Industrial Revolution.  And, they don’t even have worker’s compensation or a decent HMO.

His mode of transportation still involves harnessed livestock that take a treacherous route around the world.

And, don’t tell me one animal with a light bulb on his nose is innovative.  It’s animal cruelty.  Call the ASPCA!

As for knowing when we’re sleeping, even conservatives would admit that’s taking The Patriot Act too far!

His ordering process?  It’s downright archaic.  I mean, who writes letters any more?

The Only Thing That Can Save Santa Claus’s Business

What Santa Claus needs is mobile marketing.

Worldwide, 5 trillion text messages are sent each year, but how many of you have ever received one, or sent one, to the North Pole?  Even Verizon can’t hear you now at the North Pole.

Did you know that 18% of those 5 trillion text messages are considered commercial text messages?  Don’t you think text message marketing would be a great way for Santa to get rid of some of his closeout inventory?  I hear there’s a warehouse at the North Pole that still has half a million eight-tracks in it!

Ever see the long lines at the mall with kids wanting to take their picture with Santa Claus?  By the time the kids get up to Santa, they are often crying and that doesn’t make for a great Christmas card photo opp.  Why not provide a Custom QR Code to scan while waiting in line?  Mom could scan it and Santa could entertain the kids with videos and the provide text message reminders to be especially good at this time of year.

Did you ever watch the late news on television on Christmas Eve?  There’s usually some hokey satellite picture of Santa flying over some other country.  In the eastern United States, I think Santa is usually somewhere around Slovakia during our 11 o’clock newscast.

Well, I’m an insomniac and I often stay up late on Christmas Eve multi-tasking on my laptop while watching the History Channel, ESPN, or Skinemax.  I would love to check the app on my iPhone to know when Santa and his reindeer are getting close to my hometown so I can get to bed on time.  If his clever little engineers can’t figure out how to develop an app to track the progress of the flying reindeer, I’m sure Southwest could give them a hand.

Ordering is another issue.  How many of you still have envelopes and stamps in your house?  It’s been so long since I sent a letter that I have no idea how much it even costs to send a letter any more.  How many stamps do you need to send a letter to the North Pole anyway?  It’s not even on the USPS.com web site; I checked.  Plus, there’s the issue of the post office losing your snail mail.  No, that never happens, does it?

By the way Santa, I’m still waiting for the Porsche I asked for last year.  I knew I should have sent my Christmas list by Fed Ex.

With text messages, we could send in our Christmas lists to Santa Claus through a short code, say 72682 (S-A-N-T-A).  With an easy-to-use mobile marketing solution like this, Santa could confirm receipt and even tell you if you’ve been…bad or good.

Maybe that’s what happened to my Porsche.

Bob Bentz is president of Advanced Telecom Services which provides text message marketing, apps development, mobile websites, and custom QR Codes to its media and advertising customers.  Bob would like to supply such services to Santa Claus as well, but Santa doesn’t answer his text messages, Tweets, Facebook friend requests, or LinkedIn contacts.  Santa, if you are reading this, please follow @BobBentz on Twitter, friend him on Facebook, or hit him up on LinkedIn.  He has a great deal for you.

Shaw Communications will soon allow 900 number calls for ATS customers.

Advanced Telecom Services has confirmed that it has reached agreement to expand its 900 number coverage in Canada to include Shaw Communications.  Previously, users of Shaw Communications were not able to be billed for calls to Canada 900 numbers and were therefore blocked from calling 900 numbers on all providers.

“The 900 number industry in Canada remains quite robust,” said Bob Bentz, president of Advanced Telecom Services.  “We continue to expand our coverage and find that international customers especially are getting great results when they bring successful premium rate programs to Canada.”

Shaw Communications has 1.87 fixed line customers in Canada.  900 number provisioning for Shaw Communications customers is expected to be completed in first quarter, 2012.

Advanced Telecom Services has been providing 900 numbers solutions in Canada since 1993 when it was involved in the establishment of the original rules for the then new service.

Beware of the Android Trojan

The new malware program poses as a text message management application, then sends text messages to premium rate numbers in Canada.  This results in unwanted services and costs to the consumer.

The new Android Trojan is dubbed Trojan-SMS AndroidOS.Foncy and, it began to appear in September, 2011.  The malware is advertised as a way to monitor text messages and is distributed by a file hosting website.

Once installed, however, the fake apps sends four text messages to predefined premium SMS numbers.

Canadian cosmetic brands need a mobile strategy.

A new study shows that 42% of young Canadian women, age 18 to 34, who are smartphone users have used their mobile device to research information about beauty products.  The study was done by research firm Mobindex.

“The main finding in this study is that mobile marketers need to target younger women when related to beauty,” said Malik Yacoubi, vice president of mobile marketing at Cossette, Montreal.

While 42.4% of all young adult Canadian women use their smartphones for researching beauty products, those of the same age in Quebec are less likely to use their smartphones for the same purposes with only 21.1% of Quebec young women using their mobiles for this purpose.

But, it is not just the youngest women that search for beauty product information via their smartphone.  The study also showed that 11.3% of Canadian women over 35 use their smartphones for beauty information.

Mobile coupons were a major reason for young women’s interest in searching via smartphone.  Almost 50% of those surveyed indicated an interest in mobile coupons for beauty products.