Cell Phones the Next Advertising Platform?

I found an interesting article written by Alice Z. Cuneo on Ad Age's website about advertisements on cell phones. Right now, cell phone companies and marketers are trying to determine the success of possibly placing advertisements on cell phones. The amount of people that do not want the advertising on their cell phones is overwhelming, with 90% of consumers against the advertisements. Researchers discovered however, that consumers are more open to the idea if there is some sort of reward or trade-off. Besides the obvious desire for money, consumers are also eager to receive free cell phone features like ring tones and games.

Marketers are targeting younger people (around college-age to 30s) for this new cell phone advertising campaign. When polled, they found that people with lower income in their thirties are most interested in receiving advertisements. Only 9% of all respondents were at all interested; the number rose slightly at the thought of bribery.

It is obvious that the demand and desire for advertisements on cell phones is very low. The CEO of Mobile Posse, Jon Jackson, was quoted saying: "If you ask, no consumer ever will say 'I need more advertising in my life,'". I think Jackson hit the nail right on the head. Of course people don't want to receive advertisements on their cell phone. We are already exposed to an absurd amount of advertising every day; I don't see why people would want it to start invading their personal phones.

The marketers realize that advertising on cell phones is a great opportunity for them, but they are going to have to work hard to develop a way to get the consumers interested.

If they did start selling phone packages with a discount if you were willing to receive advertisements, I still don't think I would agree to it. I would gladly pay more money on a phone package and not have to read advertisements throughout the day. It was interesting to think about this, because I am extremely interested in every aspect of marketing. Hoping to break into the marketing business some day, I realized how hard it is to break through consumer barriers and opinions. I'm interested to see how successful the mobile companies are in starting this project up.

If you want to read Cuneo's article, check out: http://adage.com/digital/article?article_id=115614