Google’s rationale for developing and promoting Android, their mobile OS platform, has to be largely motivated by the billions they hope to earn by enabling mobile advertising, the next big frontier in digital advertising.

Call me a luddite, but I, for one, am uninterested in receiving ads on my mobile phone under the current usage (and pricing) models offered to subscribers. Here’s why.

Why This Consumer Does Not Want Mobile Advertising on Her Phone

• Time is money: as long as I have to pay for the airtime used to receive a call or go online with my mobile device, I don’t want my limited airtime to be consumed by ads or content that I did not request. Same thing goes for SMS messages, especially on the phones where my husband and I pay individually for each text message we receive.
• “Interruption marketing” is very annoying: my cell phone does not live on my hip or in a pocket, so sometimes I have to run from one end of the house to another to take a call. It’s OK when the call is from someone I care about. It’s infuriating when I have to interrupt what I’m doing, run to another room — only to discover it’s telemarketing or an advertiser’s unwanted SMS message.
• Don’t make me wait: if I pick up the phone to make a call, I will not want to wait 15– to 30-seconds for an ad to finish before I’m can call the person or company I want to reach.
• Don’t stalk me: you cannot infer my intentions or interest from my physical location. Just because I’m walking down Seattle’s First Avenue toward Pike Place Market and have to walk by the Lusty Lady, does not mean I have any interest in pornographic content.
• Don’t send unsolicited LBS-enabled ads: I’m all for location-based services content when I initiate a search– for merchants, restaurants or other service providers in a particular locale — but do not send me unwanted offers just because I happen to be walking or driving by the advertiser’s neighborhood.

Potential Benefits of Mobile Advertising

Although I have limited personal interest, as a consumer, in mobile advertising, I can see some indirect benefits to it for the larger society:

• Ad-supported models enable service for lower income people: Mobile advertising could subsidize handsets and monthly airtime for those who can’t afford cell phones under the current pricing models. The real question is, how many advertisers actually want to deliver messages to low income people who can’t afford a mobile plan?
• Advertisers (and advertising revenues) will push the carriers to accelerate their deployment of networks capable of delivering video or music to the consumer’s handset. The improved bandwidth should make for better online browsing and searching experiences for the users.
• While consumers have little recourse when calls are dropped in mid conversation, advertisers will not want to pay the carrier (or mobile ad network) for ads that are interrupted by a network glitch. If enough money is at stake, network reliability should improve.