Products & Services
What do you think of advertising on your phone?
By Charlie on 21 May 2008
The whole area of advertising is very polarising. Professionals in the mobile industry are either very interested in creating services that serve ads to mobiles or they are quite against it. For example, there are services out there that serve ads on mobile websites, such as AdMob who has served over 25 billions ad impressions. Nokia has a whole division (called Nokia Interactive and centered around the team that joined from Enpocket), so the company must think there’s an opportunity. And, advertising giant, Google, is putting some muscle behind their mobile advertising efforts.
Detractors of mobile advertising point to the personal nature of devices, the small screen and battle for attention, and also fear a constant pinging of advertising, since the device is always in the pocket, unlike a desktop computer you can walk away from.
Advertising on mobile has been and will continue taking many forms, ranging from links and banners on mobile sites to pop-up advertising integrated into the phone interface to ads that appear based your own context. And as devices become more powerful and more connected with web services, and as the number of mobile device users rise to ever larger numbers, mobile service companies will have an ever stronger interest in exploring advertising options on mobiles.
As Cat Keynes said in a very interest mobile advertising industry observation:
And, while this sounds like a great business opportunity, I am sure Nokia will take into deep consideration the sensibilities of the users.
Have you ever seen an ad on your mobile? What did you think of it? What benefits will you get out of ads on you mobile devices? Are there any fears? Let us know.
Image from Montrasio International
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Tags | AdMob, ads, advert, advertising
May 21st, 2008 at 9:09 pm
Ads stink. Period. I can’t use Firefox without Adblock because the internet looks diseased with all those ads. Funny because those ads pay my salary, for now at least, which is why I’m always looking to get into something that’s more financially sound long term.
Ads on mobile will suck because of that one thing you just said, small screen. Put a banner ad and you’ve obliterated 25% of my screen.
The pure definition of advertising is to tell someone about something with an intent of getting them to buy it. Well what do you think people talk to their friends about? Hey Tom, have you seen this movie? Hey Sarah, do these jeans make my butt look nice? Hey John, heard that new Death Cab for Cutie album?
Nokia has to concentrate on using data their mobile phones spit out to connect other Nokia users and provide relevance.
Relevance Relevance Relevance.
Know my problem with piracy? It isn’t the cost, it’s the discovery. When you’re presented with unlimited choice you face the dilemma of locating things worthy of your time.
Be relevant to my needs, take my friends information into context and most importantly let me shut you up.
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May 22nd, 2008 at 12:15 am
I’m definitely not anti-advertising, but I agree with Stefan’s comment that relevance and conservation of screen space are key.
IMHO, too much online advertising is a waste of advertisers’ money because it’s delivered in ways that are guaranteed to annoy online users — mainly by taking up too much space and by not being relevant. (And by just being stupid, which is a whole other problem…)
Anyway, as Nokia weighs its options on online advertising, I hope you make relevance-matching a priority. You’d definitely have to be far more relevant than Google adsense. Also, I hope you emphasize space-saving text ads — rather than space-wasting banners, or usability nightmares like popups and peelbacks.
Fewer ads that are very relevant are most likely to get attention and clickthroughs.
IMHO, of course.
- Amy Gahran
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May 22nd, 2008 at 2:51 am
Personally, I don’t really have a problem with mobile ads, given that they don’t overpower. I think ads on mobiles can easily be done tastefully and without putting the user off, and that’s going to be the most important aspect moving forward.
Ads on mobile websites? Sure. I’m a mobile web junky, and I see ads on tons of sites, don’t bother me. What *does* bother me is when those ads lead to a site that’s not relevant, or worse yet – not even compatible with my handset.
I think there have been several cases that prove that consumers can get by with mobile advertising, provided that it’s done well. Blyk, an MVNO in the UK, seems to be doing very well with its extremely targeted and consumer-benefitting service (view ads – get free service).
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May 22nd, 2008 at 3:35 am
Irrelevant ads are annoying, but how much is it worth to a user to have relevant ads vs. irrelevant? For me, it’s not worth very much. I’d much rather have irrelevant ads than for phone to be spilling information about me. I don’t want any third-party getting access to my location to determine relevance, I don’t want anyone harvesting my phonebook to determine relevance, and I don’t want any mining of my emails or IMs. The service providers know where my bill gets sent to, how much I pay, how much I talk and how much data I use. They can probably make an intelligent guess about my gender and age if I haven’t supplied that information, and anything else they can get from Choicepoint. That should be enough.
Advertising text messages or calls would be extremely annoying, and worse than spam. It would be enough to make me switch devices or carriers to get away from, and I’ve been with Nokia/ATT for over a decade.
Advertising on my home screen would actually be fine, if it subsidized the cost of the phone or service(free uncapped 3G data or VOIP, for example), but only if I could opt-in, reject ads on a individual basis, and they remained in the background when I was actively using the phone. There should be absolutely NO communication back to the advertiser about what I’m doing with my phone. My carrier knows whether my phone is on or off, and whether or not the program is installed. That’s all I’m comfortable with them sharing with a third-party. Any tracking of where I am or what I’m doing or anything like that will cause me to become very vocal about my displeasure.
Ads on a mobile website shouldn’t be any more than one line of text, because data and screen size are both too valuable. Just one per page, no matter what. No flashing stuff, no animation, no popups.
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May 22nd, 2008 at 9:16 pm
Mr. Gunn – Interesting point to bring up, and most definitely not one to be taken lightly by any measure.
Personally, I’m not against certain data being given out, because I know it would TREMENDOUSLY affect the relevance of the ads that I’m seeing. I.e. if I’m in a new city and have my Maps open, it might be handy to be able to enable ‘coupon’ mode or something and be able to see the restaurants in the area who are offering a discount.
Also, if I’m going to see ads on my phone, i’d just as soon them be for somethin useful, so if I’m using my music player – ALOT, I’d be ok with the phone telling someone that, so that I’d see ads for concert tickets maybe, even better, concerts of the same genre that I’ve been listening to.
The obvious flipside to that is *who* has access to that information. There are definitely parties that I wouldnt’ trust with that info, and once it’s out of my phone, I have no control over who’s getting their mitts on it.
It’ll be a very thin line that companies – both the advertiser and the company facilitating the advertising – have to tread with mobiles.
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June 5th, 2008 at 4:49 pm
Adverts – Never. If I am disturbed by an advert then the phone will be off, permanently.
We pay huge amounts for the versatility of the mobile phone. If service providers start making even more by selling advertising “space” on my private line I will punish them for their greed by cancelling the whole deal.
However, if phone services are provided completely free and paid for by advertising to those who choose to sign up for such a deal then that is fine for them.
So choice a) Pay the network provider and have no ads. b) Use a free but ad funded network.
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