Vodacom is going to start sending those who opt in, ads to their cellphones ? but how will this work, and how easily will you be able to get out if you find your inbox is overflowing?

Bruce Whitfield:
Forgive me but I have got to rant. I don't know about you but after the surge of credit card punting by the banks last year I developed an allergy to getting phone calls from people offering me rubbish I don't want. Today I got one from a mob who offered to come to my house to wash my hair as a promotion for shampoo.

I went through the roof, I went completely nuts, and then in comes to my inbox a press release talking about Vodacom saying they have got mobile advertising and it sounds like we are going to be even more overwhelmed by intrusions than we already are. Rick Joubert is executive head at Vodacom and Rick please tell me I'm not going to have my inbox overflowing with adverts that I don't want.

Rick Joubert:
Hi Bruce no not at all. All we're really trying to do is provide opportunities for brands to more effectively communicate their current brand messages in much the same way that they do on existing media like television, radio, print, etc.

Bruce Whitfield:
But the thing with a cellphone, it's a very intimate device; it is a device to whom you will give that number to certain people. What sort of protection do consumers who don't want to be bombarded with advertising have in a case like this?

Rick Joubert:
Well we would never under any circumstances push advertising messages to consumers who hasn't first provided us with permission to do so so that opt in is absolutely critical.

Many of the solutions that we are providing at the moment are not push related so it is not as if we will be pushing large amounts of SMSes into people's personal SMS in-boxes. The business that we are talking about relates more to what we call pull advertising.

Bruce Whitfield:
How would that work though? I mean push advertising implies that you send subscribed Vodacom customers stuff, pull advertising implies that they actually go and retrieve this from somewhere.

Rick Joubert:
Correct so in the same way that a good example would be the current online advertising space you access a website, I think most of us are pretty accustomed to doing so not just the Google type advertising but the regular banner type advertising from normal South African brands out there.

You can then choose to click on a banner for example and see more information on the brand. A very similar proposition in the mobile space along with a couple of others which I can tell you a little bit more about.

Bruce Whitfield:
But is there any incentive to me as a subscriber to actually download advertising do I then get a discount on my calls for example? Do you incentivise in that way at all?

Rick Joubert:
Not right now but there are certainly propositions in development which will allow for that. In fact we are launching an actual opt in service in the next couple of weeks which will provide customers with the opportunity to get free content, free text, possibly even free voice calls in the future, in exchange for agreeing to accept ads pushed to their mobile phones. It is once again absolutely critical to understand that permission is absolutely key here, they will opt in and they will be able to opt out quite easily.

Bruce Whitfield:
And the cellphone provider has control over that. So if one slip through the net they would be able to go straight to the cellphone provider and say I didn't tick the box.

Rick Joubert:
Absolutely.

Bruce Whitfield:
What is so interesting is though that your research is indicating that half the brands that you surveyed could commit up to 25 percent of their ad spend to mobile advertising in the next five years and it is a big number, it is a thumb suck at this stage, but it is an ambitious thumb suck.

Rick Joubert:
Yes just a quick correction, it is not actually our research, that research was done by a global research provider called E-marketer so brands all over the world were surveyed so it is quite an international perspective but yes it is a big number.

We have been pretty conservative in our current estimations thinking that mobile advertising will probably constitute between four and six percent of the total ad spend pie in the next five years or so but that is probably quite a conservative estimate.

Bruce Whitfield:
The theory being a brand can target a specific advertiser and ensure that its message gets through.

Rick Joubert:
Exactly, highly relevant, also relevant to the context in which you find yourself i.e. the physical location, you can only do that in a mobile phone, our phones are with us, in our handbags, in our pockets, pretty much twenty four seven wherever we are.

Also you know mobile operators obviously know quite a lot about their customers both demographically and behaviourally and as long as they give us permission to use that information obviously we are able to serve highly relevant advertising. So once again going back to your earlier point many people I don't think mind being advertised to as long as the level of relevance is high.

Bruce Whitfield:
I am calmer now; Rick Joubert thanks very much indeed, executive head at Vodacom with that new innovation which they are going to be introducing.