Mobile Advertising, Intrusive, Evil

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Read Jason’s post on his recent/real experience related to mobile advertising, and how when he clicked on an AdMob ad, the advertiser (not AdMob?), without permission, recorded the phone number and immediately initiated SPAM over SMS… Terrible. Here in the U.S. that could prompt a Class Action lawsuit against the advertiser, the ad engine provider, the message aggregator, and others involved in the flow, similar to a class action lawsuit where I served as expert witness (but that I can’t talk about)…

If you are creating software for mobiles that pushes information to users:

  1. provide a mechanism for explicit registration/opt-in (i.e. clicking on an ad link is not the same as opting in),
  2. record (and report) such acknowledgment,
  3. only send/push information if the user opted-in, and,
  4. provide for a de-registration mechanism.

Never SPAM people, no, no. If you do, you are EVIL.

ceo

4 thoughts on “Mobile Advertising, Intrusive, Evil”

  1. It did suck but I don’t think it had anything to do with Admob. If anyone is to blame it is T-Mobile for giving away my number and for Splash Mobile for using it without my consent.

  2. Yes, I don’t think it has to do with the advertisement engine either (AdMob in this case), but they all would be called and would need to defend themselves if a lawsuit, just because one of the participants in the flow decided to SPAM…

    ceo

  3. Yeswap.com, the site where the ad Jason clicked appeared, is my site. I’m upset to find that I was carrying this sort of unethical advertising. I’ve removed all Splash Mobile ads from my sites and also contacted Admob with my concerns.

    This sort of business practice reflects negatively on mobile advertising and hurts everyone in the business: consumer, publisher, ad vendor and ethical advertisers. We really need to establish and enforce a code of conduct for mobile advertising.

  4. Hi Dennis. Thanks for addressing this. Yeswap.com is great and not at fault here, and I’m sorry you were carried into this.

    The Mobile Marketing Association have such guidelines about opt-ins; now, it would be great if ad companies followed them, which mostly do I believe, but unfortunately a few of them don’t, negating the rest of the folks who care and follow common sense and industry guidelines…

    ceo

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