Is mobile advertising really a good idea?

For the past few years we've been hearing a lot about mobile advertising and how it would be so great to be able to deliver "context-specific" ads to people on the move. Arguably, the mobile phone is one of the very few media & communications devices that has not been colonized by advertising (yet). Will that happen? Is mobile advertising ever going to be a good business? How strong is the public's resentment at the violation of one of the few remaining areas of relative privacy? And if the mobile phone can be used for ads, then why not your fridge or youf kitchen table? Probably the next frontier, but until then, pondering on mobile advertising is relevant for anyone in the business of marketing services as well as for brand marketing managers. The way I see it, mobile devices are probably the very best way to bridge the gap between offline and online campaigns and I have a few specific ideas that I will keep for my customers

clipped from www.economist.com Mobile advertising The next big thing Marketers hail the mobile phone as advertising's promised land ADVERTISING on mobile phones is a tiny business. Last year spending on mobile ads was $871m worldwide according to Informa Telecoms & Media, a research firm, compared with $24 billion spent on internet advertising and $450 billion spent on all advertising. The 2.5 billion mobile phones around the world can potentially reach a much bigger audience than the planet's billion or so personal computers. Only 12% of subscribers in America and western Europe used their mobiles to access the internet at the end of 2006. While consumers are used to ads on television and radio, they consider their mobiles a more personal device. A flood of advertising might offend its audience, and thus undermine its own value. operators have lots of databases with information about their clients' habits that would be of great interest to advertisers. But privacy laws may prevent them from sharing it