"We're calling the phone 'the brand in your hand' -- you're never more than a foot away from it, 24 hours a day," said Fareena Sultan, associate professor of marketing at Northeastern University's College of Business Administration. The challenge, Sultan said, will be to produce an advertisement for the phone "that excites the person holding it."
"The big question is: Are users going to find it acceptable to see advertisements and pay for service, too?" [said Steve Krom, vice president and general manager for Cingular in New England.]
The Federal Communications Commission prohibits companies from sending unwanted spam to wireless devices, and telemarketers are prohibited from auto-dialing cell phone numbers.
Eventually, a business model could evolve in which consumers opt in to see ads every time they open their phone, but get a discount on content or services, [Roger] Entner [analyst at Ovum] said. The cell phone could develop into a medium supported by ads and subscriber fees, like cable television.
But mobile ad spending is a tiny fraction of marketing campaigns today. Last year, companies spent $421 million, or 2.6 percent of total online ad spending, on mobile campaigns in the United States, according to research firm eMarketer Inc.
"When you have 220 million-plus people with a mobile phone, it's a wake-up call to advertisers that this is a significant way of reaching eyeballs."
Marketers think the mobile ad channel may be a good way to catch the attention of 18- to 34-year-olds who eschew traditional media channels...
But to be successful rather than annoying, the ads have to be targeted, relevant and even cool.
Such companies are still experimenting -- figuring out how to tap the potential of the mobile marketing ecosystem without starting a backlash.
"It's a very, very private space. People have a tremendous emotional attachment; we've got to be really careful," Sultan said. "If you think spam is bad, it's really, really bad on your cell phone."
complete press release http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070222/BIZ04/702220343/1013
Posted by Stubbornson at February 25, 2007 07:28 PM