4info buys mobile app advertising power with Butter

4info is one of the veterans of mobile search. The free-to-use SMS search service has more than a little mobile advertising experience, and this week it has acquired some more: BUTTER, a developer of branded advertising applications. What will they be doing together?

Who are the players here?

4info is a pretty specific company – its main business is in text message search and alerts. You can search for specific information through 4info using SMS, or you can set up automatic text alerts that will send you information (about sports, news, etc.)

The big thing about 4info is that it’s not a premium SMS service. Users don’t get charged anything beyond their regular carrier text charges. 4info is entirely advertising supported – back in 2009 it released SMS advertising service AdHaven, enabling it to insert text ads at the end of any SMS it sends. These ads are what allows it to continue providing the service to end users for free.

Then you’ve got BUTTER, an application developer. It creates customised advertising applications for large brands. Interestingly, it also works with developers who’ve already created apps – BUTTER is aware that many apps sink from the store without trace. The company will work with a developer to resurrect a dead app as a branded advertising app.

As reported over on VentureBeat, 4info has announced it will be completely acquiring BUTTER – all employees of the application company will now work for 4info. Financial details are not yet known, but the deal is expected to be finalised in July.

What we think?

Interesting. What does an SMS advertiser want with an advertising app developer? The answer: more reach. 4info can deliver text and display advertising through SMS and MMS. It’s already got that engine in place: an opt-in service that can deliver targeted ads through the 4info ad network. Working with BUTTER, it should be able to increase the number of end points it can deliver to. In the future we can expect 4info to be able to deliver ads directly into applications. And this is an important move – while SMS is still one of the most popular and regularly used mobile services, you can’t just stand still. Mobile app advertising is on the up and up, and by moving into that area 4info is not just increasing its reach, but also its attractiveness to potential advertisers.