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   By Lane MichelWill mobile phone advertising be intrusive or a boon for the consumer? This debate has been building and is about to boil over with the current tests now running by your wireless phone company and advertisers. In many ways, the ability to target a message to the right person at the right time and the right place could never have been so viable. Mobile devices have voice, text and more commonly now web surfing capability at a flat rate with unlimited messages. The advertising world is drooling over the possibilities. From today’s $3 billion in mobile advertising spending, ABI Research projects that spending to grow to $19 billion by 2011. To consumers, that could translate into many unwanted messages and interruptions on a device most consider very personal. One phone to one person. Every call made, every text message sent, every web page surfed from the mobile device is attributable right to you the owner of the phone having a contract with a wireless phone company. It doesn’t take too many leaps to realize that your wireless provider knows where you live and what you do. All phones have GPS tracking as mandated by the FCC for emergency call locating. The behavioral information collected, or that can be collected about you, is what the advertising industry is so interested in. The April 23, 2007 issue of Business Week article “The Sell-Phone Revolution” begins with a neat story about a mother on vacation in Vegas spotting a billboard ad with a text message number for information from the National Basketball Association. When she got home in Florida, she received a targeted ad from Adidas via a text message for a sale on limited edition basketball shoes. She loved it. So did Adidas, their advertising agency, and her wireless company. What marketers in consumer businesses need to see in this story may be surprising. It’s the holy grail of advertising to make such a direct personal ad that gets a direct purchase connection. This is about as close as it gets. The Mom in the story may or may not have realized she gave Adidas permission to send her the text ad. Privacy advocates are charging after hidden permissions and the FCC released a recent order to protect consumer privacy requiring “expressed consent” (read that as not burying the permission in the catch-all contract agreement). None of this is new. The real difference is that the ad to this Mom for basketball shoes was relevant to her interests (and inferred needs) and delivered to her in a way she chose. ›› Continue reading this article
Copyright 2007 Quaero.
Quaero is a marketing and technology services company that provides unparalleled value to firms seeking improvement in the effectiveness of their marketing organization and technology investments. To find out more, visit our website at www.quaero.com. |
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