Google Phone and push advertising - Is it still old world marketing?

29.09.07 12:59 PM By S.Swaminathan

Business Week has an article on Google Phone and its impact on targeted push-based advertising:

Imagine your cellphone as a mini marketing machine. As you head into your car after dinner, a text alert pops onto the screen of your handset announcing the 9 p.m. lineup at a nearby cineplex. You choose the Jodi Foster flick The Brave One and a promo video for the next Warner Bros.

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.

Google and advertisers drool over the growth potential in wireless. The more than 2 1/2 billion phones in use worldwide exceed the number of PCs and TVs combined. On Sept. 17, Google announced a Web program aimed at advertisers who have created sites for display on cell phones and other handheld devices. Like its online ad network, Google's AdSense for Mobile delivers ads relevant to the advertiser's mobile audience. "The sheer volume of users across the globe makes mobile the next channel for information," says Dilip Venkatachari, director of product management for Google's mobile team.

Doc Searls has a fantastic point of view on how this is just getting no where and is becoming extremely customer unfriendly. Take a look at his view on this:

Here’s my nirvana scenario,...:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.

Even when we study customer wants and needs, our perspective is anchored on the sell side. We ask “Which company (or product, or service) will serve them best?”, rather than “How can we as customers best express our wants and needs so that any seller can fill them?” The ironic distance between these two perspectives is deep and immense.

I agree with Doc totally, after sometime only advertising funded business models(around which there is so much hype) sound a bit far fetched to me. It assumes that customers are wanting every product or service free or subsidized in exchange for ' targeted'  advertising messages!!! Also, the other huge assumption that I am willing to give up my privacy and personal information for all of this, also sounds quite impossible to believe and not just there waiting to happen in the immediate future.

It needs a new model keeping the customer in the centre of all this rather than sellers!


S.Swaminathan