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)

To mitigate the risks, Korean and Japanese companies that have allowed advertising have also put in place spam filters.

The Mobile Marketing Association has set up guidelines that include letting consumers decline to receive ads and ensuring that information advertisers obtain from customers be kept confidential.

"So because of that, spam will be less of an issue," MMA's Marriott said.

Brands themselves are also learning to be more subtle with its mobile campaigns, tapping on to a trend where youths in Asia are increasingly turning to their phones rather than an iPod for on-the-go entertainment.

Bacardi Ltd., the company best known for its top-selling rum, recently extended its yearlong partnership with Sydus to stream music to cell phones through a virtual radio "brand-channel." The company hopes to connect with a younger audience that way _ without overt advertising.

It may take time, though, for mobile ads to gain better esteem among consumers. Some parts of Asia have yet to embrace the third-generation, or 3G, phones that can carry multimedia ads. Handset technology and network signals differ among mobile carriers and countries, forcing advertisers to cater only to the tech-savvy group.

But it's only a matter of time before mobile networks improve _ and the mobile ads follow. The key is to avoid simply importing techniques from television and the desktop.

"We should all by now (know) that doing boring TV ads aren't much appreciated," Craig Davis, worldwide chief creative officer of New York-based advertising agency JWT, said during a recent visit to Singapore. "Doing annoying things is no way to seduce people that your brand is for them."

___

Associated Press Writers Hyun-Ah Kim in Seoul, South Korea, and Kana Inagaki in Tokyo contributed to this report.