Just about every week now I’m getting a call from the PR rep for a new “mobile advertising” company wanting to see if I’d like to meet with their client. The answer is almost always no, because I think mobile advertising is fundamentally evil. I’d be happy to debate any of these companies on their value-add, or lack of it, and I’ll report here if any of them ever take me up on my offer. But I can’t say I wish them well.
I am not – I must emphasize here – against advertising. Advertising is essential to business. You’ve got to let all those potential customers and clients out there know about your product or service, and many of them will thank you for the opportunity. We’re all consumers, and we need to know what’s available.
The problem is that advertising has become expensive in recent years – and not for the advertisers, but rather for us. In a nutshell – if I’m paying for access or content, as I do, for example, with cable TV or my cell phone – I consider advertising intrusive and in fact abusive. Consider the early days of TV – access was truly free, and a thirty-second ad every half hour was a small price to pay for programming. Today, however, I’m sending Comcast about a hundred bucks a month for TV, and each hour of programming is about one-third commercials. That’s abusive. That’s not a good deal. If I didn’t have a DVR, I wouldn’t watch TV at all – I’m that pissed off. So, guess what? I never watch commercials. When the advertisers figure this out, TV comes crashing down. Good riddance. Maybe the next management team will learn that abusing customers is bad business. On the other hand, I’ve got no problem with ads on the Web – I’m not paying (except in rare cases) for the content, so send those ads on over. I may not read them, but I don’t mind, either.
But the moment I see an unsolicited ad on my cell phone, I’m going to organize a campaign to get the practice outlawed. My initial thought is that we need a “do not advertise” registry along the lines of the federal (and some state) “do not call” facilities. We should make the carriers responsible for enforcing this, blocking unsolicited ads before they can ever reach us. Advertisers must learn to respect their audience – we are not sheep. Those of us who use wireless primarily for business particularly resent having our time wasted. Advertising that costs me money or wastes my time will be met with the best wrath I can muster.
