Cell phone service providers are desperate to find new revenue streams, so it's not surprising that Verizon is making the step to have banner ads appear on news, weather, sports and other websites that users visit via their Verizon mobile phones....


Of course, marketers are salivating at this possibility. Nobody really knows if this venue is going to work, but, according to the NY Times, the central theory seems to be that ads placed on mobile phones could create an intimate bond with consumers.
Say what?
While consumers may have an intimate relationship with their cell phones, since when is this going to transfer to an advertiser? Tell me one other context where consumers have an intimate relationship with anything, and then have this intimacy transferred to an intruder.
Affect transfer does occur in many other situations (use of personalities in advertising is one example), but these are expected situations that occur between consumers in typically non-intimate settings.
Anyway, I would expect that Verizon is going to tread lightly here. According to the NY Times, "Carriers have also been concerned about annoying cellphone users with obtrusive marketing messages."
The potential for making more money, however, will be way too tempting, and eventually such ads are going to be commonplace.