Advertising! On Your Cell Phone?

From the good folks at Reuters

By Nicola Leske

BARCELONA (Reuters) - Consumers may be receptive to advertisements on their mobile phones in exchange for free calls or content, but operators remain cautious about intruding on the intimate space of a customer's cell phone.

For now, consumers do not have to fear that walking past a supermarket will trigger messages to their mobiles, advertising special offers inside, or have banners burst onto the tiny screen while they check their emails on the go.

"Advertising is not just a straight move from the PC to the mobile phone," Marco Boerries, head of Yahoo's mobile business, said in a keynote speech at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

"We're trying to invent mobile advertising."

So true.  It's tricky for so many reasons.  One, touched on later in the article (which you really should read) is screen space.  A simple banner ad like you might have on the PC would either be teeny-tiny on a cell phone or it would take up the majority of the screen.  Pop-ups wouldn't really work on a cell phone as you don't generally have discernable windows like you do on the PC (Ok, or the Mac).

Then there's the question of privacy, of course.  It would be one thing to tweak banner or sidebar ads like we have on regular website for cell phones.  Maybe a page of advertising would pop up before the requested page loads?  Would you see a screen of ad space after you send a text message?  Would you receive text messages with advertising?  This last one opens up a new can of worms.

Currently, unsolicited text messages, just like regular spam email or faxes, are theoretically prohibited under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 and its various amendments and additions.  Basically these acts and laws mandate that there is consent for advertising, that the sender identify themselves and that they offer a clear means to opt out and stop receiving the advertising, even if it was initially received willingly.  In fact, Sprint had to repay customers when they sent out unsolicited ads for various services via SMS to customer who only had pay-as-you-go SMS (text messaging) access.  Sprint did indeed charge those customers the 10 cents per message to receive those ads.

Now if we're operating under what's mentioned in the first paragraph of the article, that the ads are to subsidize free services on the phone, maybe receiving a text or 2 to promote a sponsor is ok.  As long there aren't charges being incurred by the recipient (would you want to be charged when a commercial comes up during you favorite M.A.S.H. reruns?) and it was made clear to the user.

Something like, for example:

The user will receive 1 text message per day from our sponsor(s) and in return get 50 free minutes of calling per month.

See?  Straighforward, has a clear benefit to the customer.  Couple that with a clear and simple method to opt out and I think we're ok on that front.  It is, you know, the law.

Part of the problem is that these laws aren't easily enforced by the victim.  If someone steals my car I can call 911.  If someone is playing loud music next door I can call whatever non-emergency number there is in my area and complain about it.  But what do we think would happen if you called the police because you're receiving unsolicited text messages that are running up your bill?  Nothing.  You need to take the sender to court and sue them.  And with most of these spammers ignoring the bit where they need to provide their address and contact information, how are you supposed to do that?  Add to the equation that a lot of people can't afford to sue someone (I sure can't) and we have a series of laws that really only protect the (relatively) wealthy and businesses.

As for the issue of online advertising when surfing from a mobile device, wouldn't that be like advertising on a website?  Wouldn't it be up to the owner of the site to decide what is and isn't advertised?  If it takes up half the page and makes users think the site is garbage, oh well.  It was the owner's idea to have 14687431687 ads on their site.  As long as those ads don't generate unsolicited messages or calls to the customer, where's the harm?

Before I open the floor to comments let me put something out there:

I am not a lawyer.  I am not a law student, business expert, college graduate, even.  What I am is a consumer.  Any opinion I have on a law is just that.  It's an opinion.  While I realize that my interpretation may not be legally valid, I think that it is entirely valid to express how the law and its enforcement appears to the average person it's here to protect.  If I feel that trying to stop spam is pretty hopeless, without purchasing products that should be unnecessary if the laws worked, then there are probably some other people who feel the same way.  That's why I post these things - to try and shed some light on how these things look to the people most impacted by them.

Now I want to hear what you guys have to say.