Thursday, January 18, 2007

Cingular Wants Mobile Ads, Too

Since Verizon Wireless and Sprint have both jumped on the mobile ad band wagon, agreeing to put ads on their decks, Cingular wants to join the party as well. Ed Whitacre, chief executive of AT&T, which also owns the largest wireless carrier told the WSJ that it too will look to incorporate mobile ads later this year.

Like the news of Verizon’s mobile ad moves, there was little discussion of how ads would lead to any type of discounted services for customers. We guess that on-deck mobile ads are now the new normal that will get slapped on top of the current cell phone charges. Google’s Eric Schmidt was wrong when he predicted mobile ads would get some freebies, because the phone companies will likely just double dip.

Great, now we can dislike our phone companies even more. Consumer Reports already noted how much subscribers are fed up with cell phone service, and a few days ago Forrester released a report that says 79% of consumers they are annoyed by the idea of mobile marketing — that’s the idea not the live service.

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