I just received an email from Microsoft as a result of clicking through on their mobile banner ad on USA Today's mobile news site. I submitted my email address. [And, if I didn't mention in my last blog, when I clicked through on the Microsoft ad, I had no way of returning to the USA Today site. ????] Anyway, Microsoft sent me a "text" email (no HTML) with what looks to be exactly the same text as they presented to me when I clicked through on their banner ad on my cell phone. They included a URL, but it wasn't an embedded link. There was an embedded link to unsubscribe.

No new information. They didn't leverage the fact that I registered through a cell phone. No product information. Really poor execution by some entity here. They may not have paid much for the ad … but CPM's I've seen for mobile banner ads have been fairly high. Mobile marketers need to do better than this – this experience as is is ca. 1999 on the Internet … but we've learned so much since then ….