Just read an article on cnet on mobile advertising. There top CEO’s from the advertising world and the mobile operators are hopefully misinterpreted and misrepresented in the article. I hope what this article reflects is not their true way of talking about mobile advertising. The fatal mistake made is to lump all form of marketing messages that are consumed on a phone in one pile. No differentiation between SMS spam, opt-in or banner ads in browsers a la Internet.

SMS-spam has nothing to do with professional marketing and advertising. It is the equivalent of a phone sales rep calling you in the middle of dinner trying to flog something. No sane person on this planet wants this type of marketing. Even if they might consider the product offered.

This does not rule out SMS as a carrier. An opt-in system with relevant offers is of course a brilliant idea. Look at the work done by Light Agency for instance. Local stores in shopping malls group together and use an SMS based system to send out offers to people who have signed up because they frequent the shopping mall regularly and offers from the stores there actually bring them some value. The ROI for the small watch shop or the local grocery store is often huge. The contact cost is low already and the targeting is of very high quality.

Then we have a very accepted marketing method in the form of banner and text ads on sites that people choose to visit with their browser. Most of us are used to this and accept this as the way to consume free stuff and information on the web. With the mobile internet joining the computer accessed internet (hey it is the same internet!) consumer acceptance is already there. I dare to say that the mobile industry practice of premium fees for use or access to a service in the mobile is quite odd. Free advertising funded services makes more sense to many browser based services. Quality wise mobile often can offer better targeting than banner ads on a desktop. In this space there are already a number of advertising networks available that are doing substantial business already – Screentonic, Thirdscreen media, 4th screen media, MADS, AdMob, AdInfuse….I can go on and on.

Well, you knew this. I am just shocked that articles like the one above see the light of day. To look at mobile advertising this bluntly lumping it all together does not help building a healthy mobile advertising industry. More education to do obviously. Gotta go evangelizing, see ya!