Does mobile advertising make sense to me? No. If I have 20 minutes to kill. I will go to Bloglines mobile version to go through my feeds. If I want to do search, I will launch Opera Mini and go to Google anyway. Maybe I am not a typical mobile user. How do you use your smart phone?
…”

Chen, you have made an interesting observation .. IF you have time you will go to google. It implies that YOU will search whatever is top of your head at the moment. In a newspaper, I glance at the advertizements of MY interest and ignore others. IMHO, mobile advertizement is going to succeed if user gets control of what ads to get to his device rather than a steady stream coming to his mobile (and cost him money for downloading them).

Joyner later married John Joyner; the two separated before her death. Police said John Joyner is not the boyfriend Hill believed was stolen from her.

The medical board blamed Hill for Joyner’s death, calling her “grossly negligent” in administering fentanyl without the plastic surgeon’s permission and for taking too long to alert the doctor that Joyner was having problems. The plastic surgeon took responsibility for the death in a 2003 agreement with the board but kept his license. Hill gave hers up.

(1) Mobile Monday Beijing started in March 2006 and had its 6th session in September

(2) mInfo did not present in Beijing, you might have confused with cGogo for the Mobile Search session in September (http://www.mobilemonday.cn/?p=47)

(3) I read your first line of summary “Does mobile advertising make sense to me? No.”
and I must say I am very surprised by this statement. Maybe the presentations in Shanghai have not been convincing, or maybe you are just stating you don’t feel mobile advertising is relevant to your particular taste… Because there is no real debate here: mobile advertising is already happening with good success for USERS in Japan, Korea and getting popular in Europe.

Let me mention one case: Tsutaya, a DVD/CD/video rental store chain in Japan gets a boost in sales every 2 weeks by sending a free message offering 50% discount to its members (you become a member the first time your rent something, so they have about 10 million members). Because it is mobile, they send the message at lunchtime on Friday and people stop by in the evening or the week-end to rent not one, but 4 videos and are much less picky because it’s cheaper. The result: mobile marketing creates a lot of customers, who come to rent more and more various products! And they are happy!

Your reaction to mobile advertising might have come from the experience you have from email or SMS spam, but if you think about a TIMELY and FOCUSED advertising message RELEVANT to YOU, you will understand how much sense it makes, and how convenient it is.

If this was not enough to convince you, I suggest we talk again in 24 months once the market is more mature.

As additional sources for inspiration on the topic, I suggest the report we did in April on mobile advertising here: http://www.mobilemonday.cn/?p=20

In addition, while almost all Japanese content providers gave up on China after losing money in shady deals, Dentsu (Japan’s largest advertising company), CA Mobile and Cyber Communications (among Japan’s largest mobile advertising company) are starting a mobile ad company in China from December (press release from Oct 06):
http://www.dentsu.com/news/2006/pdf/2006074-1003.pdf

– Benjamin
http://www.plus8star.com
http://www.mobilemonday.cn