Technology Helps Reinvent Cell Phone Ads

Exhibition visitors try out the latest mobile phone models during a communication and broadcast exhibition in Singapore Wednesday, June 20, 2007. Advertisers are finding new ways to put their sales pitches in the pockets of cell phone users _ through video and music pumped to your handsets. As mobile networks become faster and phones smarter, analysts say the time is ripe for advertising on mobile phones to finally take off. (AP Photo/Wong Maye-E) (Wong Maye-e - AP)

SINGAPORE -- Mobile phones are a potential gold mine for advertisers, the most personal and intimate way to communicate and engage with subscribers _ more than 2 billion of them and counting worldwide. Yet the advertisers' two-liner text pitches have largely fueled a growing hate club, with recipients quickly equating the messages with spam they abhor on desktops.

Now, thanks to improved technologies, advertisers believe they have struck upon the formula for getting their messages across without irking consumers. The development is important given the mobile handset's promise to be a "third screen" _ after the television and the desktop computer.

Several blue-chip brands like Nokia Corp. and McDonald's Corp. have been experimenting with interactive ads on cell phones, taking advantage of the device's ability to know where you are. Customers have the option of finding the nearest retail or restaurant outlet with the press of a key.

Others partner with search engines and e-mail services to slip in an ad or two, similar to how Google has mastered the use of e-mail and search keywords on the desktop to help determine which topics users find interesting and, in turn, what ads appear.

Better handsets and faster networks mean "more brands utilizing mobile devices for more advanced marketing and advertising initiatives," said Laura Marriott, executive director of the Denver-based industry trade group Mobile Marketing Association.

The search-based advertising model seems to be working in Japan _ a mature mobile phone market where the bulk of the 98 million mobile phone users have phones with Internet capabilities.

Japan's mobile advertising expenditures is expected to reach $1 billion by 2011 _ more than three times the $328 million last year, according to an April report from media and communication think tank Dentsu Communication Institute Inc.

Although subscribers had felt they were wasting their time and money going through ads while conducting searches on their phones, those concerns have diminished with faster speeds and flat-rate pricing for Web access, said Akira Miwa, the report's author.

Yahoo Inc. took the plunge in June with a mapping service that combines search and location-based mobile technology. All one has to do is to enter a keyword to search, and advertisers registered on Yahoo's database pop up on a digital map.

The advertising industry is mindful of earlier mistakes, including inundating consumers with pop-up ads on the desktop and text messages on the phone.

Many agree that preserving a good customer experience is critical.

"Push marketing and spam have a very short shelf life," said Frank Brown, director of the mobile marketing and technology firm Sydus.