According to this article on CNN Money, Eric Schmidt forecasts that one day Google will subsidize the purchase of your next cell phone if you agree to accept targeted ads from Google.
"Your mobile phone should be free," Schmidt told Reuters. "It just makes sense that subsidies should increase" as advertising rises on mobile phones.
Google is experimenting with delivering text, brand-image and video ads onto small-screen mobile phones. It is enjoying early success in its strategy to win phone network allies in Japan, where TV viewing and shopping on phones is advanced, he said.
Schmidt acknowledged that mobile phones may never become totally free to the consumer. Newspapers are still not completely free a hundred years after they started relying on advertising, but they certainly are inexpensive, he noted.
(Via Textually)
When I saw this post on TechCrunch that credits Techmeme for creating a new ad unit, it got me to thinking...the world is a much better place when things are simple. Major publishers have large staffs dedicated to handling the implementation of ad units. Almost every creative or targeting change is requested via email and manually changed by a customer service person. It is a complex and rather laborious process. Not Simple.
Recognizing this, TechMeme not only created something that is easy to implement, but is compelling to the advertiser at the same time. They built a widget that calls in an rss feed and an image from the clients blog. This can be the actual companys' business blog or a blog set up specifically for the purpose of feeding the unit the ad. Techmeme just sets it up once and then the client manages the content themselves. Simple.
Web 2.0 is defined in a lot of different ways, but to me it is collection of web tools that make communicating a message or connecting with others easy. Blogs are basically just software that makes it SIMPLE for a non-technical person to publish their own web page.
Lets look at something else that is moving from complex to simple, Wireless News. Lots of sites like us, USAToday and others have all gone out and spent a lot of money creating WAP sites for mobile devices. Not Simple.
Out of the sheer frustration of trying to read the New York Times on his Blackberry, Dave Winer created the concept of a "Newsriver". He basically took a bunch of NYT's rss feeds and created a web page that is easily read on a portable device. I used this when I had some extra time this week during a "transportation mis-hap" and it is a great experience. He has also created rivers for Digg and BBC. Simple.
