Yahoo! mobile phone ads coming soon... Blah!

Filed under: Business, Web services, Yahoo!

Yahoo! mobile phone ads coming soon... Blah!

by Chris Gilmer Feb 13th 2007

Get ready for some ads on you mobile device. We knew it was coming back in November when Yahoo! announced that they were testing banner ads on mobile browser based services. U.S. users that accessed mobile web email, finance, news and sports information were the first lucky viewers of these ads. Now Yahoo! has announced that it has signed up advertisers on its mobile advertising network to run ads on mobile phones in 19 countries including Britain, Ireland, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, the U.S., Canada and Mexico. This world is run by advertising, so can we expect anything less? I would totally understand the use of mobile advertising to subsidize mobile devices, and monthly carrier fees. But the second you drop it onto my mobile device, it's not going to make me a happy camper, especially since each image I download on my mobile device I have to pay to see in data charges. Yahoo! is taking a leadership stake here, apparently in a race to beat out Google, so expect to see ads from Hilton, Infinity, Intel, Pepsi, and Nissan coming to that mobile device in your pocket soon.

Tags: ads, cell phone, CellPhone, mobile devices, MobileDevices, yahoo

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Michael Conger said 11:19AM on 2-13-2007

Upstart cell phone companies (Alltel, US Cellular and the like, I'm talking to you) Here's another chance to differentiate yourselves from the big boys. Sell us on the fact that your service remains ad-free. OR, offer free bandwidth/minutes in exchange for the ads. Clearly, TMob/Sprint/ATT/Veriz will all stick it to us as hard and for as long as they can. But you smaller guys can take a more proletarian stance and maybe get a boost in market share.

(I used the word "proletarian" in a blog comment, a snotty, intellectual word yes, but by it's nature one that should also have widespread appeal to the masses... now, don't I just seem terribly witty?)

Fabulo said 1:22PM on 2-13-2007

Now that's a good incentive for people to browse the web on a 160x160 screen, given the half of it is dedicaated to a banner ad. Wow. Adblock for cell phone?

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