Mobile Advertising Fumbles

A lot of analysis and design effort has been put into CryptoGraf Messaging v2.0.

Mobile app users can also now send an SMS Invite to their contacts to download (OTA) and use the Free Version of CryptoGraf Messaging. This SMS based Invite differs from the current wave of mobile advertising which is often perceived as unsolicited spam. The SMS based Invite to download and use CryptoGraf Messaging is more effective since subscribers who send the SMS Invite are well placed to know that the recipient will accept it as an informative message.

While at Nokia, I briefly managed a mobile advertising pilot trial. This system was an enabler of marketing based on positive opt-in to advertising. With a full CRM keeping information about subscriber input interests and preferences for receiving advertising. Subscribers would also have the added incentive of receiving discounts and coupons. I kept emphasizing the need to respect the subscriber's privacy and personal space. Subscriber's should be asked what topics interest them, how often and what times of the day they would be willing to receive a message from the mobile operator. Subscriber data gathering could be done at time of subscription and even modified when their interests or preferences changed. The system was designed to follow standard media industry practice with the involvement of full advertising value chain. This included advertisers, ad publishers, ad agencies, media planners, media buyers, the audience, and of course, the mobile operator being enabled to play several roles within this value chain. I offered the analogy of the mobile operator being the owner of several magazines, with each magazine having subscribers tuned to special interests. Ad agencies and media planners normally place ads in a particular magazine, with the knowledge that readers opted-in to advertising that's probably relevant to them. I was never to know how the mobile advertising trials would turn out, since my superiors needed me to work on a federated single sign-on related project, and Nokia soon decided to stop supplying network operators with mobile advertising servers.

Now a big talking point in the market is mobile advertising. This is apparently to help the whole industry boost revenues. But is also largely inspired by the success of Google's business model based on advertising revenues. Google's services enable them to collect internet user interests and search preferences and offer advertising that is non-intrusive and takes up a small part of the screen space. Users can even ignore google's advertising without taking any extra steps.

Google's web based advertising is in stark contrast to email that is labelled as spam. Spam is perceived as such due to the message being irrelevant to recipient's interest. There's also no knowing how email addresses are collected. However, bloggers who publish their email address can hardly complain when they receive email from a stranger. They'd be fortunate if part of the information they receive is relevant to their blog.

We made a judgement call by sending email announcing CryptoGraf Messaging upgrade release without asking the recipients explicit permission. The emails were sent to people I had personally met or been referred. We also sent the email to different organizations, journalists, mailing list regulars and bloggers who wrote about topics that were related to the email. However, a certain blogger wrote back asking why we sent him email. I apologised for sending him an unsolicited email but explained that we were implementing a mobile marketing technique (SMS based Invites to download and use CryptoGraf Messaging) which was in the spirit of topics covered in his blog. He also wrote back that the email was "neither welcome nor unwelcome", so apparently the content was of some interest to him. With hindsight, it seems that he's put up his email address as bait for his blog. We made a judgment call by sending email to a stranger based on their publicly available contact information and professed topic of interest. But we need to admit that we did not fully comply with best practices prescribed by the CAN-SPAM Act.

Meanwhile, too many mobile users have no recourse when they receive mobile advertising from their network operator with messages that are often irrelevant to their interests and arriving at unpredictable times of the day.

Somehow, it seems the advertisers and ad agencies are the ones who receive the short end of the deal. Mobile subscribers who are interrupted (in the shower, in a meeting, while driving, etc.) are less likely to be receptive to such marketing. Mobile marketing as it is currently implemented is as sophisticated as telemarketing.

Protect our Privacy...for our own Security

A recent issue of the Scientific American talks about the need for privacy from an interesting ethical and engineering perspective.

Privacy is needed by..."a lion that sees a deer down at a lake and it can't let the deer know he's there or [the deer] might get a head start on him. And he doesn't want to announce to the other lions [what he has found] because that creates competition. There's a primal need for secrecy so we can achieve our goals."

Privacy is also necessary for individuals to be allowed room to make mistakes and to grow. Just as a child stumbles while trying to walk, he is taught to enjoy the experience and grow with the encouragement from parents. This is based on the universal principles of repentance and forgiveness. Societies that have room for such principles to be practicable are more likely to flourish since people would not be afraid of being branded a failure but to learn from their mistakes. Bankruptcy laws are a good example of a mechanism which allows a person to recover in spite of failed attempts.

Too many systems are engineered to collect information, without regard to how the data will be used or it's relevance after a certain time period. The marketing department will always ask for more data about customers, demographics, behaviour, etc. It is also relatively simple to satisfy requirements for data collection given the computing capacity we have for storage and analysis. But in spite of the data gathering and analysis capability, there's too many instances when marketing is still done with the sophistication of telemarketing...mobile advertising being the main culprit.

In a Scientific American interview, Latanya Sweeney, makes an excellent point that "the privacy problems that I've seen are probably best solved by the person who first created the technology. What we really have to do is train engineers and computer scientists to design and build technologies in the right kind of way from the beginning."

So far, making engineers aware of human computer interfaces is only just beginning to show results with the recognition given to products that enhance usability. The next step, to make engineers aware of acceptance and social adoption requires them to think of barriers to technology. We already engineer systems that refrain from intruding on personal physical space. We are quite capable of engineering systems to enhance people's mental capacity and productive use of time. However, too many engineers presume that when systems intrude into people's privacy and temporal space, there are justifiable benefits but do not offer users a viable means to choose to opt-out of those "benefits".