Verizon to start targeted advertising this week, will be optional
If you're a customer of Verizon's, you'll want to keep your eyes peeled for an email, text message, or notification mentioning the carrier's new “Verizon Selects” program. In exchange for sharing your data usage …
Context & Ripple Effects
Verizon had already signaled its advertising ambitions by allowing ads on its mobile phones in 2006, while 2011 coverage raised privacy concerns over monitoring mobile web habits. Verizon Selects turns that underlying network-data relationship into an explicitly optional advertising program.
The program matters because it gives Verizon a direct role in the advertising market rather than leaving the carrier solely as the connection between users and ad-supported services.
First-order effects
- Verizon customers are asked to make a privacy-for-targeting choice, while Verizon gains a consent-based route to use data usage in its advertising offering.
- Advertisers gain access to a Verizon-operated targeting channel tied to participating subscribers.
Second-order effects
- Verizon must make the opt-in proposition credible enough to attract participants; low participation would constrain the usefulness of its targeting inventory to advertisers.
- Mobile publishers and ad networks face a carrier that can sell targeting based on its direct customer relationship, rather than relying only on data collected inside apps or websites.
Third-order effects
- The move points toward carriers treating subscriber data and consent as monetizable network assets, alongside connectivity itself, with privacy disclosure becoming central to that business model.
The trend: Mobile carriers are moving from carrying ad-supported traffic to seeking a direct share of targeted-advertising revenue through subscriber data and consent.