As reported by Advertising Week … If you want to reach guys in their 30s in Midtown Manhattan who use Motorola Q phones to check sports scores twice a day, you’re in luck. That’s the type of targeting is coming to mobile phones soon courtesy of Sprint and Cingular. While some people think people won’t tolerate ads on their mobile phones, I think it depends on who you are talking about and what kinds of advertising opportunity it is. Younger customers are more price sensitive and more willing to put up with advertising so long as they get something they feel like they are getting something of value in return. The problem is right now the type of content available on mobile phones is of low value … which puts the value equation out of whack.
What we Think
In the future, most mobile content will be free to the consumer … supported through an advertising model much the same way that most content on the internet today is free. But before this can happen the industry must mature a bit in two directions. First, as the television industry has painfully learned (see the second link below on just this very topic) advertisers will not spend money on dreck. And right now most mobile content is dreck. Second, the mobile content industry needs light weight, easy to use tools to create compelling mobile content. And I’m not talking about tools to mobilize websites. I’m talking about tools to build mobile applications from the ground up that were designed first, foremost, and only to delight people when used on a mobile phone. In other words, tools that allow the easy assembly of mobile applications and content built for the ground up for mobile.
Relevant Links
Ad Age article on behavioral targeting
