Do You Really Want Ads on Your Phones?

These days advertisements are all around us. Highways, magazines, TV, Internet and now mobile phones. Now, I don’t really mind advertisements in general. I have covered their value in past posts and do utilize them extensively on this blog. They do help subsidize overall cost of goods in general.

However the focus here is on cell phones. Mobile phones are considered as the holy grail of advertising. They are personal, they are highly customized and highly specific interfaces for users. Potentially they could allow advertisers to target their ads with relatively high specificity. Some of the areas advertisers could target for ad placements are:

• Direct ad placements in the phone navigation.
• Placements in search results
• Within games or other applications
• Messaging via SMS or MMS or IM

The excitement around this space is very high in the advertisement community. There are multiple start-ups trying to get a piece of the pie. Even Google has got in the action. Wireless Week’s Brad Smith reports that advertisers will spend close to $ 1.5 Billion this year alone on mobile ads. This number is expected to reach $ 14 Billion by 2011.

Now the intent of this post is not to drown you in numbers. However this time around I want to switch positions and understand if the users really want this. Is the mobile too personal for ads? Do we care enough to let carriers and advertisers violate the space and impact the already cumbersome experience. Or are we okay as far as we get something back in return?

Note: I have setup a quick poll on this post. Please feel free to provide your views.

Forrester Research reports based on a survey that 79% of consumers find the idea of mobile ads annoying. They perceive ads as Spam on their phones. However some of them were willing to try as far as they could derive some value or receive something in return.

I am somewhat in the same boat. I do believe that users (especially teens and students) will be fine with mobile ads as far as they receive something valuable in return. Free voice minutes, free digital content, free phones or free mobile service itself.

Only time will tell the success of this medium. However please do provide your feedback by taking this poll.