The next big thing

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: America.

Another hitch, says Nicky Walton-Flynn of Informa, is that operators have lots of databases with information about their clients’ habits that would be of great interest to advertisers. But privacy laws may prevent them from sharing it. Moreover, advertisers, operators and middlemen have not agreed a common format for this information, nor worked out how to share the revenue it might yield. Some think these obstacles will confine mobile advertising to a niche for years to come. But others see a whole new world of possibilities, as more people use their phones to access the internet and consumers grow used to the intrusion. Mobile phones, some of which are now equipped with satellite-positioning technology, could be used to alert people to the charms of stores or restaurants they are walking or driving past.

Tying ads to online searches from mobile phones is another potential goldmine. A subscriber typing in ‘pizza’ for instance, could receive ads for nearby pizza parlours along with his generic search results. Such a customer, mobile operators hope, is likely to be more grateful than annoyed by the intrusion. What could be more relevant than that?