It seems that advertisers have been getting pretty excited about the potential of the mobile phone. This is no surprise when you consider that cellular carriers possess terabytes of demographic data on their users and they even know where the caller is. Your mobile phone gives all of this away. Advertisers today have the potential to mould campaigns that can be aimed at specific age, gender, income and lifestyle segments and locations. This is bringing advertisers around the world close to their long dreamed of vision: the mobile phone as an ultimate, targeted, personal marketing machine.
The new Google phone is right on, dubbed the G1, has been touted as a working man’s smartphone — a cheap, Web-friendly wireless device that can make life easier for millions of consumers. The G1, as it turns out, also stands to make life a whole lot easier for Google — by making it a snap to track your movements on the mobile Web and send you ads as it does on the desktop. The device, sold exclusively by T-Mobile, gives Google access to your e-mail, instant messages, contact lists, Web-search history and geographic location. By keeping tabs on your mobile life, Google (GOOG) can quickly figure out what sort of ads to send your way, and when
“It’s like a walking surveillance device,” says Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, a consumer watchdog group.
Mobile advertising is still relatively new — G1 users, for now, get ads only through search results, for instance — but it’s clearly a hot spot. The market is expected to reach $2.2 billion by 2012, from about $800 million now, according to JupiterResearch. Ultimately, it could surpass the traditional Web, now a $20 billion ad market. Read more…
Thank you Jack for sending this my way 🙂