Mobile has been heralded by many pundits as the current big thing. Mobile is disrupting so many businesses. Services like Facebook and Google are looking at mobile too.
MTN Nigeria, one of the mobile telecommunication providers in Nigeria, is taking one step ahead to create another stream of income. It is important as the profit of Mobile Network Operators [MNO] world wide are being eaten deep into. There are more people who use free messaging services and social media to get in touch these days instead of making phone calls and sending text messages.
According to a Nigerian Techblog, Techsuplex, MTN Nigeria will be launching a mobile ad platform today. MTN Mobile Ads is MTN Nigeria’s mobile advertising platform that enables small and large organisations push advertising to a profiled target market of almost 50 million subscribers on the MTN network. Ads will be delivered via the following channels in this 1st Phase: interactive SMS (iSMS), MMS, USSD and Rich Media (Web/WAP).
This news begs so many questions. Does this not mean we are going to be exposed to more spam messages from MTN? Will it be an opt-in only service? How will MTN use all the data they have collected about us? For your information, if you use MTN’s sim on your mobile to access internet, they know what sites you visit, where you were when you visit them and a whole lot of other data. And possibly the other networks would join in too.
Four of us discussed this matter on Twitter a couple of hours ago. their official portal.
