You’ve said it: it is about the context! This however is why people equate it to personal: with the (theoretical) targeting and the fact that most people don’t share their mobile wherever they are, it is the one device that brings context and user closest, hence the most personal device.

Be it targeted marketing, LBS or what not, it is all about the context. Context evolves around objects, so targeting or tracking these objects is helpful to create this mesh in which to increase relevance of any given offering to any particular user. Diverting user and device can pull things out of context. If my wife, my son and I would share one mobile phone though, I would probably receive offers/ads/info on lip stick and airbags (her industry), my son would be bombarded (and bored) with golf offers and my wife would be drowning in various gadget and skater deals. Not so good…

Fred – sadly you’ll find this LBS model really hard to implement effectively – I’ve been there and written the free white paper. Let me know if you’d like a copy. And there’s also the matter of tracking redemptions on a CPA model, which if not impossible, is very, very hard.

Manas – not sure I follow your logic here. Surely the mobile is as much a business tool as a personal one? And I don’t buy into the fact that because it’s portable (or mobile) automatically makes it more personal. I wear my watch and glasses pretty much everywhere, but does that make them a great marketing medium? And even if we could find an acceptable way of beaming ads to my glasses, am I more likely to react more positively to messages because they’re “my glasses” as opposed to seeing the same ad on my PC?

And while I admire and agree with your aspirations about making ads more relevant by personalising them, we have to be realistic about what we can deliver. There’s huge leaps to be made in better targeting, but true personalisation is some way away yet. Even mobile operators who (in theory) have a lot of the data to personalise marketing, find that in practice, the implementation is beyond even their mighty capability.

Russell

The greatest challenge before mobile advetisers is to make effective use of the ‘personal’ nature of mobile..

I think that is the flaw in advertising on mobile today, NOT the fact that mobile is not personal. let me explain..

I mite use a laptop, palm tv, etc but the mobile is extensively used “only’ for personal reasons. it is more readily carried/ taken everywehre, all the time, unlike an other media of communication. so on and so forth… point being mobile is “infinitely” “more personal” than any other media available to advertisers today.

Now, the point that u have made about banner ads, SMS pull is very correct. They are not personal. That i think is not the flaw of the media, but the use it is being put to. Maybe the fact that most advertisers are children of the wwww generation may have to do with the duplication of online advertising in a slightly modified mobile world.
That is where the challenge lies to use the mobile media in a more effective, ’seperate’ way! We at our company are trying to keep that in mind while developing our mobile advertising. so when we or anyone gets to put together those pieces.. thats when.. to use the clice.. “Mobile Advt will be Personal” !!

So the Personal argument seems to me to be a red herring.

Unless the idea is that because it’s somehow personal, marketers need to approach it more cautiously than other media. I think that this is pretty suspect too. After all, spam is spam and I can’t see people getting more upset by getting it on their mobile than on their PC.

Russell