The advertising industry is starting to turn its attention to advertising on cell phones.
Here’s an article that forecasts a “perfect storm” of annoying advertising. “It audibly interrupts your life like telemarketing. It�s cheap to mass-produce like e-mail spam. And it holds you hostage like TV ads.”
“eMarketer projects that the $421 million spent on cell phone ads in the United States in 2006 will grow to $4.7 billion by 2011 and exceed $6.5 billion in 2012.
“Advertisers speak of an ominous sounding �paradigm shift� in mobile advertising, where more of the spam will be multimedia, targeted and tracked. . . .
“One use for ads will be subsidized services. We may very soon see major carriers offering free wireless service in exchange for ads. Those ads will pop up in the middle of YouTube videos, or play at the beginning of phone calls.”
We deal now with dropped calls and proprietary equipment and incomprehensible calling plans. In hindsight, this may look like the good old days.
