This new startup company is offering an optional download to certain customers within the Indiana and Ohio service areas where they receive targeted ads through their cell phone. Mobile Posse is the name of the company providing the advertising system, which instead of inserting banner ads or annoying customers in the middle of doing something, they wait until the phone is idle and send a targeted pop-up ad.

Mobile Posse is rumored to be working with a major carrier here in the US. Some of their ads aren’t just advertisements either; some come in the form of a coupon. I have no clue how you would print that or if the employees at those institutions are trained to accept those types of coupons by just looking at your cell phone. Mobile Posse’s ad system is also a learning one, it starts by getting you age and gender, and from there it begins sending you ads, however if it sends you x number of ads from a certain category and you click on none, it gets the hint you are not interested in that category and stops sending those types of ads to you. So basically it is a targeted ad system.

Acuity is another company offering a similar service, except they have taken it a step further and made the physical connection. Apparently some of their ads are only triggered or sent to you when you are close to the establishment they are pertinent to which should make the ads more useful at the very least.

I personally am not a big fan of advertisements at all, but these two companies are doing some things that would make them more relevant to your interests, location, and other factors which would make them tolerable. I would much rather have pop-ups on my phone when I am not using it, that I can look at and then act on or discard, than some giant banner or stupid text message popping up on my phone while I am trying to do something else, that’s just my personal opinion though.

Mobile phone firms test pop-up ads [via PCAdvisor]