Techdirt has picked up on a disturbing quote in in a story about mobile advertising that has coume out of CTIA…
Gary Towning, group account director of OgilvyOne Worldwide, said that “the carriers are not willing to give the advertising companies demographic data about the subscriber, including the caller’s usage trends…”We don’t want to irritate the consumer,” said Mr. Towning. “Please release the data to us so we can target our campaigns and make them as relevant as possible. If carriers want that ad revenue, they’ll have to release that data.”
It’s the most ridiculous thing I have heard come out of CTIA…Towning makes all the right noises about being wary of privacy concerns and not wanting to annoy consumers and then goes and makes a statement like the one above. I’ll make this as simple as possible:
- It’s not the carriers’ responsibility to provide advertisers with contact details and behaviour patterns of their subscribers — in fact it’s exactly the opposite.
- It is the job of the advertising agency to interact with the consumer in a way that makes the consumer want to view the advertising.
Interestingly, the rest of the article describes the difference between the response of consumers to mobile advertising in the US and Europe…basically Americans delete the ads as soon as they get them and Europeans actively seek them out. Despite the claims from the advertising industry that this is the carriers fault and US carriers need to “educate” the consumer it’s clear from the article that the difference is in the way the advertisers use the space. Rather than bitching about not being able to get easy access to user data to send spam US advertisers should take a look at their cousins over the Atlantic…maybe learn a few things.
Comments have been disabled for this post