While my mobile phone used to be an almost ad-free zone.  It has suddenly turned into a virtual ad machine.  Several of my news applications now slip advertisements in between their stories.  When I scroll through the news articles looking for something to read, this makes it easy to accidently touch and activate the advertisement, kicking me out of the application and into my mobile web browser.  Needless to say this does not endear the advertiser or the news app provider to me.  Some news apps put most of their advertisements at the bottom of the screen of news articles.  This is a better arrangement for me as a consumer; however, I don’t always scroll to the bottom of the page; consequently, I doubt that these ads get as many views as the embedded ones.

While my Safari “Block Cookies” setting is “Allow from Websites I Visit”, the advertisements that I receive seem significantly less targeted than the ones I receive on my PC.  I never thought it would happen, but I miss having advertisements in which I have at least some semblance of interest.  Nevertheless, I don’t miss getting the same advertisement over and over for those products that I have already purchased.

My favorite mobile advertisements are still the ones that use geolocation to notify me of a discount at a nearby store.  Unfortunately, these still seem to be pretty rare, and again, they can’t tell if you’ve already bought the item or already eaten somewhere else; consequently, they’re not as useful as I’d like.

Right now there seem to be a lot of growing pains with mobile advertisements, but I’m hopeful that between the information that I choose to share and the use of big data on the seller’s end, I will see tailored advertisements and discounts.  Then viewing those advertisements will be worth my time and they can quit hiding out in my newsfeed waiting for me to accidently click on them.