Mobile "Marketers" Ready To Unleash Spam

Wireless

from the like-spam-but-more-annoying dept

Apparently three million Americans have opted-in to receive ads on their mobile phones, says the COO of a “digital marketing firm” from — you guessed it — Florida. That number seems awfully high, but even if is legit, the company’s ideas on how to market to those people are way off-base. All it sees is a pool of people, ready to have any and every advertising message crammed down their throat, but that’s the kind of broadcast-style thinking that will destroy mobile marketing. It’s all centered on the idea of a captive audience, and the thinking is that since people have their phones with them all the time, they’re constantly captive and available to spam, er, advertise to. Put that sort of instrusive marketing is becoming less and less effective, and mobile marketers must engage their audience rather than just interrupt it. The guy from the marketing firm says “because they sign up for the service, the messages aren’t seen that often as spam.” Right — constantly getting interrupted by random text messages from whatever company that buys a list of phone numbers won’t be seen in even that good a light by consumers.