Mobile Ads

Have you ever recieved an ad on your cell phone? If you haven't, it may be coming in the near future. Even as ads on cell phones become more common, advertisers are holding off on a full-blown embrace of the tiny screen as a marketing tool. Why?

The problem is that advertisers don't know what users are doing, if anything, when they see the ads. So until advertisers find out, they may hold off on committing more precious marketing dollars to the mobile medium.

The wireless industry has refused to facilitate approach. Most wireless service providers block cookies before they can ever get to cell phones, arguing that to allow them would open a hole in their networks for computer viruses. They also say they worry that a flood of new data traffic could degrade service quality by clogging wireless networks.

Hopefully, it will take advertisers a while, if ever, to employ advertising on cell phones. Until then, we will be annoyed by them everywhere else, making our cell phone the only place to escape the advertising industry. For now...