Sprint: Mobile ads won't annoy customers

Don't worry, the customer experience comes first when it comes to adding advertising to mobile content, or so says Paul Reddick, vice president of business development and product innovation for Sprint Nextel, during a panel discussion at the fall CTIA show in Los Angeles on Tuesday.

The show has been abuzz since yesterday when Reddick let it slip during a speech at a pre-CTIA event that Sprint plans to begin inserting advertising in its content starting this fall.

While some content providers, such as ESPN and The Weather Channel, have already added advertising to their WAP sites, the carriers have been reluctant to allow any advertising on content that is offered through their own collection of content. The concern has been that customers will be annoyed if they are bombarded with advertising on their phones. But Reddick said that Sprint will make sure the advertising is not intrusive and will add value to consumers.

"First, it is about the customer experience," he said. "And we're trying to find ways to please customers and bring rich content to the customer."

But Reddick doesn't believe that advertising will necessarily help subsidize mobile content. In other words, consumers shouldn't expect Sprint to give anything away for free anytime soon. Surprise, surprise from the cell phone company that basically re-ups customers' contracts for another two years anytime they add minutes or change their service plan in anyway.

"Mobile advertising will be a supplement rather than a subsidy," he said. "When we did research we found that why customers adopt or not adopt content has less to do with it being too expensive. Instead people said they didn??t subscribe, because it wasn't relevant."