AOL Takes Their First Step Towards Mobile Advertising

AOL announced this week that they have purchasaed Third Screen Media, a company that specializes in mobile advertising and maintains relationships with several mobile carriers. Click here to read the article.

The purchase gives AOL a direct line to mobile carriers and others in the mobile advertising industry. Mobile advertising is projected to become a hot issue for advertisers as soon as tomorrow, but the problem still lies in the ability to reach the masses. As quoted in this article, Third Screen Media still only delivers about 225 mobile impressions each month, not considered a large number in the mobile industry.

I applaud AOL for taking this step into the mobile industry. While I believe we are still years away from this being accepted by blue-chip advertisers, I think we are even further away from it being accepted by consumers. The cell phone is still a place that we are not getting hit with messages and many believe consumers want to keep it that way. Call to action advertisements are going to be tough as well, because I don't see people walking into grocery stores to redeem their 2-for-1 Coke ads by showing their cell phone to the clerk. I also don't see us spending the time to download the coupon and print it off.

We are in a time right now where consumers don't even want to give out their email because they don't like spam. Spam is nothing more than an email that pops up in your inbox; that you don't even have to click on, just simply delete. Will you continue to fill out your phone number on the registration card if you begin to receive SMS messages every hour? This is the question we will wait on and in the mean time we'll watch several companies spend millions of dollars.