Mobile Advertisers Recognizing The Benefit Of Not Spamming People

from the it-took-them-this-long? dept

Wed, Aug 22nd 2007 8:18pm — Mike Masnick

For many years, there's been talk about the mobile advertising opportunity, with some advertisers practically drooling over the possibility of sending ads directly to users' mobile phones. It wasn't that long ago that the standard example used at many conferences and trade shows was how you'd be walking by a coffee shop and it would send you a text messaging offering you 20% off on a cup of coffee or a free bagel or something. Of course, that ignored the fact that probably 99% of the people hit with that message would consider it intrusive spam, especially if they were on the go. Luckily, though, some early complaints about such services (and the general anger towards spam, popup ads and other intrusive ads) has made it so many mobile advertisers have realized the focus needs to be on pull, rather than push. That is, as people are using mobile phones more and more for local information, there's tremendous value in putting advertisements that might be relevant to users as they're searching -- rather than simply bombarding them at random. The article does note some experiments with more intrusive push advertising, but set up in a way where the end users have a lot more control and say over the conditions under which they actually receive ads, in an attempt to keep them relevant. For once, it's good to hear of some restraint in the ad industry. Hopefully, it remains.

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Filed Under: advertising, mobile, spam

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IsraelTechNews, 23 Aug 2007 @ 1:24am

Ad-funded mobile games
Another example of non-Intrusive mobile ads is injecting of content-based infotainment advertising into rich media, such as in-game and mobile video. Israeli mobile operator Cellcom has already tested this advertising model with its first ad-funded mobile games service.
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Mobilehelpdesk, 23 Aug 2007 @ 4:16am

Strict now a days mobile SP
Yeah, this was so irritating, i got everyday many advertising calls sms es at y mobile. For a busy mobile person, it is disgusting. I first restriced those calls manually! But now a days good to us, that all mobile service providers are banning this things!
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Anonymous Coward, 23 Aug 2007 @ 5:04am

Theiryourloose
"...that might be relevant to users as their searching..."

THEY'RE

Honestly
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- Mike (profile), 23 Aug 2007 @ 9:48am
  
  Re: Theiryourloose
  "...that might be relevant to users as their searching..."
  
  Oops. Thanks for pointing it out. We've fixed it.
  
  As an aside, it's a fairly common mistake. You can just point it out and we'll fix it, rather than having to act high and mighty about it.
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Beck, 23 Aug 2007 @ 7:06am

Walking Down the Street

That example of walking down the street and getting hit with an ad from the coffee shop as you walked by always seemed pretty stupid to me. After all, if they wanted me to see an ad why wouldn't they just put a sign in their window?
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inc, 23 Aug 2007 @ 11:42am

not to mention you having to pay to receive that sms message.
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Person, 24 Aug 2007 @ 2:42am

mobile ads
Mike, I live in Thailand, and the mobile companies (or at least mine) make ludicrous use of direct-to-phone advertising. The vast majority of people don't do contracts, so there are always a dozen new promotions at any given time. I get text messages, which isn't so bad, but it's the automated recording phone calls that tick me off, because guess what--if you don't answer it, at least for one second, it will call you back a little while later. You only pay for outgoing calls, but it's a matter of wasting my time and interrupting at unwanted times when ***I am already a customer***. I've gotten these calls past midnight and before 8am, too. Ridiculous. But there's very little by way of basic consumer protection here, anyway, let alone preventing consumer annoyance. What are you gonna do.

There are businesses that also make use of the proximity SMSing, which I don't run into very often, so I haven't found it so annoying yet. For example, at this year's National Book Fair, when I got into the convention center, it sent me a welcome message with some basic info, opening and closing time for the day, that sort of thing. I can see how people don't want to be bothered, but it's not so bad if they only send you a message when you're already there, be it a coupon or whatnot, rather than trying to actually draw you in as you're walking by.
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