The screen is tiny, the bandwidth puny, and in-your-face ads won’t work. Does wireless mean the end of advertising as we know it? Welcome to the brave new world of “mAdvertising”! That’s the
buzzword coined by Agency.com cofounder and CEO Chan Suh to describe the convergence of marketing and advertising demanded by the new wireless medium. In his keynote speech at a recent Jupiter
Communications Online Advertising Forum, Suh commanded the audience, "Advertising on the wireless platform has to be different from the web.”
So get ready for “on the go” advertising: AvantGo,
Vindigo, SkyGo, and beyond—wireless services that will deliver timely, targeted ad messages to cellphones, PDAs, and other handhelds clutched by busy consumers. With mobile devices carrying global
positioning technology, advertisers will be able to pinpoint consumers to the street corner. Combine that with profiling databases that know your shopping preferences (privacy? get over it!), and
Vindigo claims it will offer advertisers “women aged 18-34 in New York on a Saturday afternoon, who are within three blocks of your store and shopping for clothes.”
Think that’s science fiction?
This emerging new market is projected to reach $1.2 billion in 2003 and $16 billion in 2005. So Media Magazine asked Jakob Nielsen, a self-described “user advocate” and one of the most influential
people on the web, and Mark Stephens, media director of Lot21, a digital communications company, to debate the issues and opportunities just ahead.