Perhaps there are as you put it “billions” which today would equate with 100% of the 2 billion people world wide with mobile phones of some kind, but I think you’d be hard pressed to get even 50% of people interested in having their lives interrupted by marketing sent directly and uncontrollably to their cellular phones.

I for one am vehemently against any such intrusion. If I want information I go to a mobile or PC browser and I seek it. I don’t need random crap broadcast to me and every one else. The personalization that would be required to serve me ads I want goes far beyond the contextual advertising Google offers, to do the same context driven advertining on a phone would require that the advertiser is literally “listening in” on your conversationsa nd broadcasting you advertisements based upon when you said or what you sent in your text messages.

Is that somethiing you’d like? The phone company listening in on your life? Wait…silly me! They already are…or will be if the White House continues to have its way. If so, advertisers certainly won’t be far behind. Can anyone say voice driven context sensitive advertising? that’s right, I knew you could…

I agree. As a pre-launch company in the mobile social software space, let me just say this: Mobile Spam will come. Marketers, at least the ones scoring lower on the empathy-ethics scale, see phones less as a personal communication device and more as advertising space. Phones are an information medium and thus they can be advertised on. Their argument basically goes “you don’t complain about ads on your TV, do you?” We don’t have to go into the fundamental difference of an always-on, portable and highly personal communication device and a broadcast box for displaying entertainment. The programming on the later is financed by ads, while the communication on the later isn’t.

Spam on the internet is a big market for three reasons: 1. It’s dirt cheap. No comparing with the price of address database, paper, envelope, printing and stamp for traditional direct marketing. 2. It’s difficult to trace. Spoof addresses and hackable SMTP servers abound. It’s a network founded on trading bandwidth and pipes are either full or they’re empty. They’re around and traffic on them is (virtually) at marginal cost 0. 3. Legislation has been slow. While that’s changing, too few people are sent off in cuffs. Let’s make spam a serious offence.

Mobile spam will be different for exactly those reasons. 1. It’s not dirt cheap. It’s cheap (relative to how intrusive it is), but there’s still an economic cost. No penis enlargement SMS in the foreseeable future. 2. It’s easy to trace. There’s no way people will be able to spam without the knowledge of a mobile operator. People do complain and they complain to their MNO. If this stuff is really unrequested, we will see aggregators and spammer shutting down in droves. Furthermore, I see ICSTIS (in the UK) and MNOs themselves starting to make mobile marketers jump through considerable hoops to send even permissions-based marketing. The reason for that is simple: churn. Look at Finland or Denmark, where MVNOs and MNOs are engaged in cut-throat competition. The era of single-digit revenue growth is looming. The financial focus at operators is on capital-return, proof being the recent share buybacks of Voda and DoCoMo. MNOs cannot afford to be the network people run away from. 3. Legislation. Spam legislation will be applied to mobile as well. Let’s see the first people in government getting spam on the mobiles they use for their day-to-day affairs. They’ve been relatively insulated from internet spam in their official lives. They won’t be as lucky.

So yes, I agree it will be a nuisance, but it will be light compared to the internet, though the end user will experience it as more intrusive. And they will complain, loudly, to their MNO.

I still think there’s a case to be made for permissions-based marketing to mobile. There are some things I would really like to receive (given an easy way to turn it off and on), e.g. local event listings, cinema, etc. Basically the same stuff I get in my inbox. However, there should be a way to separate this from P2P communication. E.g., make it a dedicated WAP page on my portal or some such thing.

I think there’s a huge market for requested and relevant and valuable and well-timed mobile marketing, just like there is for correct email marketing. I just don’t think SMS/MMS/WAP-Push or Voice is it.

Wow, this has gotten very long. Might cross-post on http://blog.incrediblinc.com

I’m hoping — and there is some evidence to support the hope — that mobile advertising will be non-intrusive, that marketing messages will be on an opt-in basis only. True, the advertising industry hasn’t shown restraint in the past, but it may begin to. Especially if the operators try and force them. The big problem will be people who find out how to take advantage of the mobile internet to send unwanted ads or malware.

But I’m not sure consumer choice is going to be the answer here – consumer apathy in the TV space was solved not by a consumer boycott, but by the creation of a device that made commercial-skipping a winning proposition in hand with another plus – recording a tv show for later – DVRs.

I see something similar in mobile, I’ll be making a blog post on it.