Sprint Sees Advertising-Supported Mobile Services

Sprint is anticipating the day when advertisments become commonplace on mobile phones, although “it’s not clear yet what form advertising might take, whether commercials inserted into shows and games or some other delivery method” according to Paul Reddick, VP of business development, strategy and planning at Sprint PCS. As the article points out, content is currently supported completely by consumer fees, so the addition of commercials needs to lower the price or offer some other benefit. People don’t appreciate watching commercials after they’ve paid to buy something, especially if they’ve paid extra money for the bandwidth the content is delivered on. The most effective advertising will be stuff that is embedded into games or included as part of the content, or commercials that are good enough for people to want to watch.

Reddick goes on to say that mobiles will also be used as “wallets” to pay for goods at the counter, but it would require infrastructure investment and training in the stores, and Sprint isn’t going to pay for that.
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