How distracting will the ever increasing (or at least predicted) flood of mobile advertising affect our mobile workers? I am not talking SMS here… I can probably count on one hand the number of times I was spammed. I am talking during mobile web surfing? Perhaps not that much of an issue now… but later? Is the answer to whitelist a handful of sites necessary for the role and prohibit the rest? This has enormous potential to be highly disruptive… another good reason for policies in the back end and written procedures (who hates manuals?) .
Actually for that matter social networks (and the related tools and applications) can also distract and hinder productivity if not managed and monitored.
Is this something to worry about now? Could end users go back to using two devices if limitations are too tight?
Note #1: I am purposely ‘backtracking” this post to a few experts in mobile advertising… all in the hopes they will post an opinion at their blogs or in the comments section here. If none do, you will see this paragraph strangely disappear… 
Bottom line is that the enterprise will protect its mobile worker productivity (or at least they should).
Note #2: Regardless of responses (hopefully you will respond below) we will also review the EverySingleOneOfUs Communications Movement from a mobile enterprise and mobile worker perspective as soon as we get a chance… your comments and input are also appreciated in this analysis.
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Jose, interesting question raised, and thanks for the back-track and the “expert in mobile tag” for the London Calling blog.
My quick response is that if we as an industry think about how to balance the best user experience, with the opportunity to ad fund content AND adhere to the 3 P’s of Privacy, Preference and Permission (ie we ASK the user what they would like to see) then we won’t be faced with ads being disruptive.
If the mobile worker sees ads, then if we follow best practice they will have opted in here, but if the user has control then the ads they see will be more like content.
The challenge here (and if I understand the angle of your questioning) is will mobile ads affect mobile worker productivity?
Hard question – does Facebook affect productivity? Probably yes. Back in 1995, one company I worked for banned the internet totally from staff access as they were not getting anything done!
Like anything, trust your workers and they will deliver. If they see some relevant ads on their mobile then fine.
If they just see endless banner ads that are not targeted then perhaps this will be an issue.
Andrew Grill
London-Calling.org.uk
Hi Andrew – Thanks for dropping by! I agree with you in principle when we place the end user in full control with freedom of choice (so to speak) over what they see and what they don’t see on their devices. However, I still foresee the enterprise not giving not giving full freedom 100% and restricting the ads on those corporate devices. I have seen it done in many a place over other things so I have a feeling that they will use controls and policies (for example as part of the BlackBerry Enterprise Server) to limit such things. Once more thank you for dropping by.