“Microsoft on Monday began displaying mobile advertising to MSN Mobile customers for the first time, in hopes of generating additional revenue,” Elena Malykhina reports for InformationWeek.
“Now when mobile users in the United States visit Microsoft’s MSN Mobile Web page on their cell phone and smartphone browsers, they’ll see banner and text ad placements,” Malykhina reports.
“The software giant claims that the introduction of mobile ads will enhance the experience for customers,” Malykhina reports.
Full article here.
Enhancement? Uh, riiight. The good news for MSN Mobile suckers is that the experience was already impossible to diminish.
MacDailyNews Note: If we could operate with fewer or no ads, we would; but we can’t, so we don’t. As always: iPhone users, while on EDGE, please use our RSS feed instead of our home page while we debate whether we should be redesigning our Web pages for a device that offers a full Web browser and purports to surf the real Web or until Apple releases a 3G iPhone, whichever comes first.
Any time in life spent not being exposed to advertising is time utterly wasted, apparently.
Please, Microsoft, pioneer some way in which I can have ads projected onto the inside of my eyelids while I’m trying to sleep.
It sounds like Microsoft will make their mobile experience even worse than it is now … what is worse than abysmally putrid.?
Careful MDN. You also run lots of ads and browsing your site on a mobile can hardly be described as a frustration free experience.
you have to pay for ad-enhanced eyelids
“MacDailyNews Take: Enhancement? Uh, riiight. The good news for MSN Mobile suckers is that the experience was already impossible to diminish.”
Ahahaha… priceless.
“…mobile ads will enhance the experience for customers.”
Hey Ballmer, give me a some of that good shit you’re smoking.
I don’t get “mobile ads” at all. I understand that the data intersection of a person and a location is an “advertising opportunity” but unless the person opens a browser on their mobile, I don’t get how they are going to deliver this stuff.
Does MS really expect that people will enjoy being sent targeted adverts for shoes as their mobile relays the person’s proximity to the shoe store back to MS’s advert server? I would crush my mobile under the nearest truck if it started doing that and so would most anyone I think.
A free cell-phone that rings all day to remind you of purchasing opportunities? A free mobile that is choked with spam email all day and night?
I don’t see how even the most skinflint moron would really enjoy or even tolerate that sort of thing. I just don’t see that there are enough poor dumb f*cks on the planet to make that profitable, and even if they were, an advertiser likes an *upscale* audience. How does a group of folks with no class, no taste, and so poor that they get a free ad supported cell make for a good target market?
@Eddie:
Your comment was dead on! (inre; MDN + ad banners)
I’m typing this comment via my iphone using wifi.
Visiting this place is godawful via Edge. However, using edge to visit other Mac sites is less problematic.
Gman
I always find this guys rants rather appropriate although those of you with delicate ears or would rather not go to hell faster may not want to click this link or any others on his site. Definitely addresses the ads aspect quite nicely. http://ranting-gryphon.com/Rants/2rant-commercials.mp3
One meaning of “enhance” is to raise the value or price of an item.
Ads definitely raise the price of mobile browsing.
Value? You decide.
@Eddie:
Couldn’t agree more…. takes this page forever to load without adblock enabled. I know sites need to be supported financially, but this page is plastered.
It’s good to see that Newspeak is alive and well in the 21st century. We have the unpatriotic Patriot Act, Bush trying to convince us that War is Peace, No Child Left Behind leaving them all behind, and now MS telling us that advertisements are enhancements!
http://www.george-orwell.org/1984/index.html
Microsoft is good at “enhancements.” Look how Windows Vista has enhanced the user’s experience.
@ Charles
And yet we still click here don’t we?
And this dose of arsenic in your food will kill those pesky bacteria. Uhh, sorry for the collateral damage.