Ads on cell phones

[Bob The Mercenary]

I heard this question raised on a radio station on the way to work the other day. It's purely hypothetical and as of yet I haven't heard of anything like this in the works.

Would you accept ads popping up on your cell phone every time you opened it if it meant free phone service? Also, if your answer to that is yes, would you mind if you had to watch the whole ad through before placing a call, much like most streaming videos.

I'd have absolutely no problem with ads on my phone for free service, as long as I could close them out at the push of a button. I might find it tolerable to need to watch them all the way through if a 911 call overides them.

[handofpwn]

I think i could tolerate pop ups on my cell. As for videos, if they were five seconds or shorter, i wouldnt mind.

[42PETUNIAS]

itd have to have a pretty decent plan to do that, or i wouldnt tolerate it. I doubt this would actually happen any time in the near future though, i think it takes to long to load stuff onto it to be practical, it might have to spend more time loading the ad than playing it. Although, if the ads were already on the phone, i guess it would work.

[Muffin Mage]

Oh, no, you could probably have them streaming when you aren't doing anything with the phone and then they just pop up when they need to.

I'd take that kind of service if I were in charge of paying for it on my own, though.

[handofpwn]

Paying for it on your own? Wasnt the point of the ads to make the service free?

[Muffin Mage]

Well, see, getting this hypothetical service would be in lieu of paying for my cell service, for which my parents are currently paying. And coherence isn't one of my strong suits at the moment, so I'll shut up now.

[42PETUNIAS]

streaming while you arent using it would work, but wouldnt it be a fairly large drain on battery?

i just cant imagine a practical way to do this.

[ApathyMan]

My answer would be a resounding no.

I despise the continuous widening and deepening of advertisements in our society... We're living in an age in which subliminal product placement is ever so pervasive and is rapidly expanding in size and scope. Hell... now it seems that entire television series are formed completely for the purpose of showing products and advertisements.

Product pacement in film, television, video games, and other companies' commercials is obscene.

I see enough advertisements in all of those realms. I don't need to see them again on my cell phone.

If you don't have a problem with it, go ahead and get your free service. I just would rather not whore out my time and attention to companies selling products I'm never going to use.

[Demetrius]

If my background was a constantly changing ad for something or other I could care less, videos on the other hand would make me happy to pay the undoubtedly lower cell phone bills that would surface after this service showed up (price competition would lower the prices for pay services so they could remain competetive).