Text+

In 2008, serial entrepreneur Scott Lahman had an insight that the rise of smartphones would change SMS messaging. “I had started a mobile gaming company,” he recalls, “and witnessed how gaming evolved, and I hypothesized that mobile messaging would move to be over-internet rather than through texting plans.” So he got to work building his messaging app, Text+. And Scott was right — within the first week of launching in 2009 he saw about 1M downloads of the new app. “You can get a free phone number, customize your telecom service, and access a lot of amazing features at no out-of-pocket cost,” highlights Scott.

With near immediate success and visible opportunities to grow, Scott brought on Alex Scissors to lead the venture's monetization strategy. The Text+ team wanted to keep the app free for users but also fund the business, so they introduced ads. “We incorporated advertising in 2010 and have built out Text+ to be an ad-supported telecom business,” says Scott. “We’ve found advertising to be a really powerful way to open up services for people and scale for our business. With this business, we’re able to offer a service for free that would normally cost $50-200 per month.”

Being ad supported has helped the Text+ team fuel growth and continue pursuing their mission. “Ads are what we use to drive and power our business,” Alex says. “For some people unable to pay for expensive plans, we’re their primary telecom provider. We use ads so that we can offer free texting and calling and help people of all economic backgrounds communicate with their friends and family. Without ads, we wouldn’t be able to do that.”

Alex, Scott and the Text+ team have found purpose and meaning through their work helping people of all economic backgrounds. “We hear from people who are really thankful to have an ad-supported option to help them stay in touch with their friends and families for free,” Alex says. And it’s a service that adds real value with flexible features at no cost.

To support their ads business, the Text+ team decided to partner with Google AdMob. “As a global app,” Scott explains, “AdMob is a strong partner that can fill our ad inventory in any country, with high quality ads, and innovative ad units. AdMob really helps our business grow globally, gives us peace of mind, and unlocks new ways for us to earn revenue.” The Text+ team has also found value in their AdMob partnership beyond their bottom line. “The AdMob team has given us great guidance and made a lot of resources available to us,” Alex says. “It’s been clear that they really care about our overall business health, revenue, and success, not just our success with Google – and that’s the AdMob approach that we’ve seen in action. It’s been a terrific partnership.”

The team sees a lot of opportunities ahead for their business and the industry. “So much of smartphone communication is over WiFi these days,” says Scott. “We still see a really big opportunity to help people tap into that, save money, and get more flexible telecom services.” Plus, Alex adds, “we still see tens of thousands of downloads per day; it’s clear people are interested and excited about this product and there’s a lot of room to grow.”