First they came for the kids, and it didn't affect me, so I said nothing. Then they came for the women. And I said nothing. Finally, the advertisers came for me, and there was no-one left to stick up for me. So I bought myself some Adidas boots.
MOBILE PHONES are personal devices, so we feel violated if someone invades our privacy with a spam or an unsolicited phone call about double glazing.
But that doesn't stop the blaggards doing it.
So perhaps we should be grateful for Inneractive, a company that's devised a more subtle method of invading our cosnciousness. (Hang on, is that a good thing?) They've got all kinds of clever tricks for breaching our natural defences against bad taste and pushiness.
Luckily, I'm not in an important demographic targeted by advertisers, so I don't really care what happens. So I can be dispassioniate about all this.
One cute advertising trick is to work adverts into games. Why charge kids for a mobile phone based football game, when you can give it to them free, then use it to sneak all kinds of adverts onto them. The advertising hoardings round the pitch, for example, all exhort you to buy Adidas. The goal nets have got an eBay logo on them. Apparently, 40 per cent of people click through, having seen one of these ads.
Any old video content can be overlaid with an advertising message. Even crap videos like The Daily Mirror Stock Market Investors Club Song could be overlaid with some cute copywriting for, say, one of those debt consolidation companies.
The genius behind this is a man called Offer Yehudai. If he gets his way, even Satnav won't be safe. You'll be driving down Oxford Street, and the Satnav will say "don't forget to drop into Top Shop, where there's a 20 per cent discount on tops."
Now they're launching a free form of instant messaging for mobile phones. Well, it's free as long as you don't mind watching an advert (video download link).
It's all aimed at kids anyway, so who cares? µ
Once upon a time, with my first mobe a few years ago, I found an option in the settings to refuse all unsolicited SMSs.
It worked rather well, cutting down the pesky buggers to only the operator's "Hello, Welcome" message (funny how operators do not think their trash is like everyone else's trash).
Alas, I had to change phone after a while, and my boss gave me a company phone as well. Neither have the option anymore, and I get a lot more useless messages than before.
I wonder why that option disappeared ? (duh).
I wonder what it would take to get it back ? (something about someplace freezing over, no doubt).
I had an idea of doing this using Bluetooth. As people walked past, or inside a shop, the system would search for bluetooth enabled phones and send them an advert, or info.

This could also be used for shopping centres. If someone has been walking aroud for more than 45 minutes you could target them with a message about tea/coffee/snacks.

If there are some shops looking to promote a sale/new line, then they could have messages sent out at other areas in the shopping center to entice customers to visit their shop.

What do you think? I've got some other ideas like these. Are they just idle daydreams, or potentially worth some money? ;-)
What I hate about targetted advertising is that they go by stuff that you ALREADY OWN. 

What I want is a psychological test that makes a profile that gets stuck on a USB stick, or something.(so you can't be tracked unless you want to be) That way, instead of seeing the latest and greatest, and simply getting what everybody else gets, every once in a while you'll find out about special stuff.

What I want is HDTV glasses with a wireless connection and a 3D desktop that I can control with my hands, rather than a mouse.

I've NEVER seen spam that mentions that. Just a bunch of stuff about Viagra and sex organ enlargement.