My local newspaper recently changed to truly be local with only one page devoted to national or international news yet on Sundays they have the expanded news and there is one page devoted to business. In this weeks paper the main feature was Technology helps reinvent cell phone advertising an Associated Press story from the Broadcast and Communication Exhibition in Singapore. The story is how advertising on mobile devices is now less obtrusive and not as distractive. Some advertising can be beneficial information which is a big part of Web 2.0 philosophy.

 

Why this is important is that even in small town America the mainstreaming of the Internet on mobile devices is recognized as the future of the Internet. Just as people that do not have home computers are missing out economically so will those that do not have multimedia devices miss out in the near future. What has kept many people from accessing the internet by mobile device is cost and speed. 

 

The cost is certainly going to go down if advertising can be done in a manner that most people perceive as beneficial. For example when using your GPS aware device you wish to dine out, a list of restaurants near by will pop up. These restaurants have paid the search provider to be listed on the web the same as they pay to be listed in the Yellow Pages of a phone book. What developers need to do is create new applications that use a beneficial advertising. This way you are paid by the advertiser and do not need to worry about how to distribute and sell the application.

 

Ron