IP Democracy: Cell Phones Are The Final Frontier for Advertising

The New York Times’ Eric Sylvers has this piece today about all the chatter at 3GSM regarding the coming boom in advertising that appears on cell phones. Pre-roll spots on downloaded video clips, audio ads that run before songs, it’s all apparently headed our way on the one device that has been relatively free of ads.

That’s fine as long as the user gets a price break in return. Some companies are looking to subsidize the cost of content with ads in order to offer their products at low or free prices.

“If you can get something for half-price or for free if there is a bit of advertising, and that can be done in a noninvasive manner, that’s compelling,” said Chadd Knowlton, general manager of the content access and protection division of Microsoft. “We’ll continue to see richer and better mobile advertising across all kinds of content.”

But, unlike PCs or TVs, the cell phone is a highly personal device. We carry it with us wherever we go and advertisers know where we are, and perhaps, even what we’re doing (talking, watching, listening, etc.) So privacy issues loom larger with mobile phones than any other platform.

The good news (for consumers, not advertisers or wireless carriers) is that all this will take a little time to implement. No technical standards have evolved yet to make it really easy for companies to advertise on mobile devices.

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on February 14, 2007 9:09 AM to IP Democracy