Mobile Advertising on Your Cell Phone: Yea or Nay?

There’s a lot of talk these days about mobile advertising and whether or not it’s intrusive. To me, it’s all about context. Are you currently interested in the product you’re receiving information about? Or is there a specific reason you’re getting it at that moment?

With so many new cell phones coming equipped with GPS, I think we’ll be seeing more location-sensitive advertising. For example, a Starbucks advertisement when I’m looking for an afternoon latte that could also direct me to the closest Starbucks would be a lot more interesting. Or a Ticketmaster alert that arrives as I pass by a venue that sells tickets would be extremely helpful – I would pay for that.

In order for services like that to be helpful, however, we have to be willing to sacrifice some privacy – to share our information about what we want, our shopping habits, even our location. How much is too much? For the most part, I’ll take the added value and convenience of mobile advertising (though I don’t yet have a GPS enabled cell phone).

In the meantime, I use Cell Fire for my mobile advertising. I like Cell Fire because it’s not a push method – I have to retrieve the offers. But if you’re like me, when you go shopping you always get to the checkout counter and remember that you have a coupon sitting on the counter at home – where it does you no good.

A visit to the cellfire.com web site leads you through the process to get a validating text message sent to your cell phone (you can opt to have notification of new offers sent to your phone or an email address). Once you receive the text message, you follow the instructions and download the 81K Cell Fire application, put in your zip code, and it downloads offers for you.

You can change locations or refresh your offers. Until my cell phone knows where I am and when I want that latte, this form of mobile advertising at least alerts me to deals in the area without being intrusive or annoying.