Marketers hail the mobile phone as advertising's promised land
ADVERTISING on mobile phones is a tiny business. Last year spending on mobile ads was $871m worldwide according to Informa Telecoms & Media, a research firm, compared with $24 billion spent on internet advertising and $450 billion spent on all advertising.
The 2.5 billion mobile phones around the world can potentially reach a much bigger audience than the planet's billion or so personal computers.
Only 12% of subscribers in America and western Europe used their mobiles to access the internet at the end of 2006.
While consumers are used to ads on television and radio, they consider their mobiles a more personal device. A flood of advertising might offend its audience, and thus undermine its own value.
operators have lots of databases with information about their clients' habits that would be of great interest to advertisers. But privacy laws may prevent them from sharing it
clipped from: www.economist.com