Ads on your Phone
Business Week is talking about the absolutely horrible idea of a Google Ads sponsored, free phone:
Imagine your cellphone as a mini marketing machine.
[...]
That kind of 24/7 advertising engagement–on a phone, no less–may sound like a nightmare. But what if you could determine the kinds of products you get pitched? Or, when your flight gets canceled in a faraway airport, text messages pop up for the best hotel deals in town? No random insurance ads or airline deals for trips to places you never visit. Best of all: Watch or read the custom ads, and your phone minutes are free.
Why would I ever want my phone to be a mini marketing machine?
If it sounds like a nightmare, and feels like a nightmare, it probably is a nightmare. Can you image how annoyed you are going to be when you have to make that one quick call, but you have to watch or listen to an ad before you can make that call? And do I really want to be so precisely targeted? What about the privacy implications of this?
And I sure don’t want to see any more ads. Phone service is not expensive enough for me to make that trade-off just yet.
(and yes – I am aware there are ads on this website – feel free to use AdBlocker Plus – at least on the web, you can just block them 
Update: Doc Searls is asking the right questions and he has the right answer to this:
Why do we continue, in 2007, to believe that markets are all about What Big Companies Do? Worse, why do we continue to take advertising for granted as the primary source of the the Bux DeLuxe required to fund technical, social and personal progress?
Here is his scenario:
Here’s my nirrvana scenario, Linda:
- No damn advertising at all. I don’t care how warm and fuzzy Google is, I don’t want to be tracked like an animal and “targeted” with anything, least of all guesswork about what I want, no matter how educated that guesswork is.
- Tools on my phone that let me tell sellers what I want, and on my terms – and not just on theirs. Whether that’s a latte two exits up the highway, next restaurant that serves seared ahi, or where I can buy an original metal slinky.
- I want to be able to notify the market of my shopping or buying intentions without revealing who I am, unless it’s on mutually agreed-upon terms.
Hidden inside all of this is the real question: when are we going to hit the post-advertising world where we tell the companies what we want instead of the companies telling us what we are supposed to want? Read the rest of Doc’s post to see how he thinks we can get there.
It’s a waste of time to revolt against the marketing machine. The job at hand is to build the Real World again, from the humans out to the companies that serve them. Real markets — the noun, not the verb — are what we need to strike a Neo’s bargain with the machinery of marketing. Unless we build tools for ourselves, we’ll just be talking the talk.
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