Will Gen-C accept ads on their mobile phones?

We've seen many surveys with very pessimistic views on accepting ads on the mobile phone. We all hate spam. We consider the phone to be very personal. Messages on it are urgent, important. We don't want ads in it. Note - that on ANY media, we instinctively do not want ads, so just saying no to a survey is not a sign that advertising won't work. We wouldn't want ads on TV either...

But - ha-ha - lets get some survey data. Q Research is reported in this week's issue of New Media Age (April 19, 2007) with a survey of 1,500 UK youth aged 11 - 20.

When asked simply - do you accept ads to your mobile, the survey found 32% willing to accept

Then when asked - would the youth be willing to accept ads that are about their areas of interest, this jumps to 71%

Then, when asked if the ads offer discounts and coupons, it goes up again, to 76%

And finally - this is the eye-opener - if the youth is asked if the ads would give them top-ups to their prepaid phone accounts, 84% say yes, such ads would be welcome...

Maybe we need to keep a close eye on Blyk ha-ha...

Comments

[André Serranho]

Hello Tomi, great post! My first comment: "only 84%?"...

It's been a while since I turned 21, but that doesn't mean I won't accept ads on my phone in exchange for free calls/mms. I will!

When Internet came up, that was the "price" for free e-mail and other services. Still today, I get ads on my Yahoo!Mail accounts--which I promptly ignore, but that's another story. And why I ignore them? Read on...

What operators need to know is *which* ads should go to *each* customer, hence maximising the possibility that the ad resonates to the customer, and thus minimising the risk that the ad is understood as spam. Luckily for them, my company (Xtract) is developing the products that will make them able to do that selection. These are going to be extremely busy times for me. Good!

[Stuart Oliver]

Are they still "just ad's" if they are offering discounts and/or mobile top-ups? I don't think they are.

I must be one of the most anti-ad's-on-my-mobile people out there but even I will open the firewall in exchange for something that's of value to me.

I've got a great app on my phone that allows me to white/blacklist callers. It automatically diverts calls to voicemail depending on the list configuration and I never see them. This is a great app.
Now what I need is a similar app to "read" incoming ad's, delete (without notification) those with no offers and happily present the ones with offers to me.
Oh, but hold on a minute, isn't this just a variation on the spam filter...?

I really can't see me ever accepting ad's on my mobile given what a personal piece of technology it is. The only halfway house I can see is having a second pay-as-you-go one that has the number registered to receive ad's. Much like I have a separate email address for all my online subscriptions and registrations.
Oh no, hold on a minute (again), I did this to reduce spam into my "personal" mailbox. :)

Seriously though, the only way I can see mobile ad's being successful is for the advertiser to get the context right so that the ad's are actually valid. So, advertising your life insurance policy to me when I'm on the train platform is not going to work. Making use of the location data of my mobile and offering me a discounted donut while I put up with train delays is likely to get a different response.

I should stop now, so to conclude. For me there is far to finer line between ad's and spam and I'm not a fan of either. It will be interesting to see if I change my mind over time!

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I really can't see me ever accepting ad's on my mobile given what a personal piece of technology it is. The only halfway house I can see is having a second pay-as-you-go one that has the number registered to receive ad's. Much like I have a separate email address for all my online subscriptions and registrations.

[ノースフェイス]

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