Mobile social network itsmy.com lets users decide what advertising to receive

itsmy.com - a popular mobile-only social network with over 1 million registered users announced today that they will be handing over control of ads to their users.

Users can now self-select from 15 categories what types of ads they’d like to receive. For example, there are fashion, sports, and entertainment categories. An initial test of 20,000 users saw 82% make their own ad selection. CTR response rates in the test group was 3%.

This whole strategy is interesting and worth following over the coming months as it’s essentially taking the exact opposite approach of behavioural targeting which has been working great in other online channels.

If they can combine user behavioural targeting with self-selection, my bet is that response rates would improve even more. I would even test a subscription model for self-selecting “no-ads”.

Having said that, many mobile devices do not support cookies or other user tracking mechanisms, so trying out a self-selection model makes sense… for now.

Here’s a re-post of a video demo of their platform from this year’s world mobile congress: