Mobile Advertisers Walk on Thin Ice
By Steve Baldwin
Marketing Manager, Did-it Search Marketing
There are some 2.2 billion cell phones in the world and many advertising executives seem to view these phones in the same way that oil industry executives regard the unspoiled reaches of Alaska, Africa, and the North Sea: as fertile fields for exploitation and future profits. Development of this pristine, ad-free frontier sometimes seems inevitable, especially when you consider that all three major search engines (Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft) have mobile strategies in place, plus the fact that the mobile carriers themselves (AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and others) have already tested mobile ads.
With so many powerful forces gathered at the fringes of this hitherto unspoiled ground, what’s holding the advertising juggernaut back? Well, you, me, and according to a recent study commissioned by Harris Interactive, four out of five cell phone users. Contrary to the wishes of the deep-pocketed information, advertising, and telecommunications industries, most people detest the idea that their cell phones will be polluted by advertising, even if it’s as relevant or non-obtrusive as text-based search advertising.
This overwhelmingly negative reaction toward cell phone ads isn’t surprising once you take note of the real value proposition of mobile communications: to free mobile users from the traditional constraints of time and place and multiply their personal productivity in a way that’s historically unprecedented. While it’s true that much of the use people make of this extraordinary freedom is recreational (a fact familiar to anyone who’s been involuntarily subjected to the kinds of idle, purposeless conversations that seem to constitute the majority of mobile conversations), the fact is that people also rely on these devices for emergencies and direct access to information furthering their personal mission-critical activities.
The widely diverging uses we make of our cell phones, from frivolous to mission-critical, create a complex communications environment that is quite unlike the Web, television, radio, or any other preexisting electronic media. Because the context of the cell phone changes with every call we make and every call we receive, it’s an unpredictable and even dangerous environment for marketers to tamper with. For example, there is no way for marketers to know whether, when I key the word “Police” into my mobile phone, I am trying to find a policeman to stop a crime or am idly searching for a way to attend a rock group’s reunion concert. Any marketer who makes the mistake of interjecting himself into the former query will not only be deemed irrelevant and annoying, but actually might cause enough of a delay in communications to cause someone to be unnecessarily shot.
Such are the stakes in the mobile environment, which is a far more active medium than even E-mail and the Internet and one that is far less tolerant of even low-key advertising messages that we routinely and habitually screen out when they appear in a browser window or on a search engine results page.
Mobile advertising boosters, take heed. People have gotten used to the freedom which mobile phones have given them and have demonstrated that they are more than willing to pay big bucks for this freedom in the form of monthly subscription fees. One cannot simply “push” commercial messages to mobile users and expect them not to push back. The “pushback,” when it comes, will be in the form of a peaceful but powerful rebellion in which users will flock to any mobile carrier promising them an unspoiled, ad-free environment. Many will likely pay a hefty premium to keep the mobile environment exactly as it is today: ad-free.
Why provoke such a rebellion when you already know how deeply people want to keep their cell phones ad-free?
-- Guest Blogger
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