Mobiles, The Prime Advertising Method
The Financial Times reports that Andrew Robertson, chief executive of Omnicom's BBDO advertising agency, thinks mobiles will "replace TV as [the] prime ad medium." Yeah, right. The FT goes on to quote him as saying, "We are rapidly getting to the point where the single most important medium that people have is their wireless device. It's with them every single moment of the day. It's genuinely the convergence box that everyone has been talking about for so many years."
The mobile is indeed convergence, but advertising would doom its effectiveness and I can't see how subscribers would tolerate it in a TV like form. Since all wireless screens and displays are quite different and most quite limited, I think the best an adman could do are Google like text ads. Other interesting tid-bits from the FT article:
"Mr Robertson spoke as BBDO released a report that said consumers are now more willing to live without television than without mobile phones or home computers."
"The agency asked nearly 3,000 typical consumers in 15 countries to choose the communications device they would most want to keep. Forty-five per cent said their home computers, 31 per cent their mobile phones and 12 per cent their televisions. In China, 61 per cent opted for mobile phones, compared with 30 per cent for home computers and 4 per cent for televisions."
"The survey found that mobile phones users like to stay connected even while they are asleep. More than 60 per cent said they kept their phones on and within reach 21 to 24 hours a day, and 15 per cent said that figure was 16 to 20 hours a day."