Announcing Mobile Ads Blog Carnival

Blog Carnival Index - browse the archives

As you know, mobile advertisement is somewhat of a hot topic on this blog. I have covered the the topic on several articles. Read them here:

To continue on this theme I have decided to launch a new Blog Carnival (what’s this?). The intent behind this carnival is to feature the best posts around this topic. The idea is to feature thoughts on both positive and negative side of this topic. The first edition will be published on September 1st 2007.

Mobile Ads

Do you have a post, which you think represents your opinion on the subject? Go ahead and submit it to be featured on this carnival. You can also send in your post via email to mobadscarnival@gmail.com . Here is a link to the carnival page. Don’t forget the deadline is August 29th 2007.

Looking forward to receiving some great posts.

Do You Really Want Ads on Your Phones?

Mobile Ads

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:

[poll=2]
  • 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?

(more…)