Cingular Wants Mobile Ads, Too

Katie Fehrenbacher | Wednesday, January 3, 2007 | 12:13 AM PT | 4 comments

Since Verizon Wireless and Sprint have both jumped on the mobile ad band wagon, agreeing to put ads on their decks, Cingular wants to join the party as well. Ed Whitacre, chief executive of AT&T, which also owns the largest wireless carrier told the WSJ that it too will look to incorporate mobile ads later this year.

Like the news of Verizon’s mobile ad moves, there was little discussion of how ads would lead to any type of discounted services for customers. We guess that on-deck mobile ads are now the new normal that will get slapped on top of the current cell phone charges. Google’s Eric Schmidt was wrong when he predicted mobile ads would get some freebies, because the phone companies will likely just double dip.

Great, now we can dislike our phone companies even more. Consumer Reports already noted how much subscribers are fed up with cell phone service, and a few days ago Forrester released a report that says 79% of consumers they are annoyed by the idea of mobile marketing — that’s the idea not the live service.

4 comments so far

January 3rd, 2007
1:38 AM PT
Dubai Boy said:

I wonder if mobile companies in other countries will follow suit?

January 3rd, 2007
5:10 AM PT
Anonymous said:

All eyes on Apple to hopefully bring cellphones back to the hands of consumers (and developers). This carrier nonsense has got to end.

January 3rd, 2007
5:40 AM PT
Eric B said:

I’m confused by what they’re planning on doing. Are they going to just be sending text messages to their customers’ phones advertising products? Or will this be something we have to sign up for?

The day I get an unsolicited ad sent to me by my carrier is the day I cancel my service.

January 3rd, 2007
9:39 PM PT
Furious Styles said:

i’m going to guess that non us carriers are not doing this. tmobile, a german based company has not announced this yet. at least i have not heard about it.

and we also have virgin mobile, but i don’t know if are just a repackged subsidiaray of another larger carrier, but they are not us based either.

if i get this damn add on my cingular phone, i’m heading to tmobile.

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