If you’re like me, your mobile phone is starting to turn into something you’d hoped it never would: just another way for people you don’t know – or likely care to – to interrupt your day.

And before we start passing around advice about preventative measures to stay off telemarketing call lists, it’s only fair that I explain my definition of an interruption, because we’re not solely talking about phone calls. There are plenty of people on earth who view time as the only real currency in this world – entire cultures even – and whether or not you agree, it is important to acknowledge they are out there. For these people, unwanted communication – particularly if it takes their attention away from what they are doing at the time in an “invasive ” manner (read: text messages with an alert sound, emails set to vibrate, etc) – well, that’s an interruption. And while most of us here probably get enough emails that we couldn’t possibly still have our mobile devices set to vibrate/sound every time a new email comes in, there are still a lot of people out there who do (and most of us have our phones do something when we get a text). And all of us shop.

Where does this all take us? Well, watch the following one minute funny video from an Adobe ad campaign that my partner Brian sent me over the weekend.

It’s only funny because, on some level, we can all relate. Either as brands trying to leverage new digital channels to get our message out OR as customers being bombarded with communications that seems utterly irrelevant, we laugh because we see a bit of truth in there. The metrics to measure a digital campaign’s effectiveness are still – a lot more often than not – the exception, and not the rule.

And that brings me back to the narrative about what really distinguishes between a mobile campaign that simply didn’t “hit it’s mark ” from a brand perspective, and one that the customer actually views as a legitimate interruption to their life; one that may actually damage their overall relationship with brand doing the sending. Do you know the difference?

En masse, the people who responded in our most recent Mobile Report certainly don’t, and neither do those who took our most recent marketing survey. But that hasn’t slowed the tide of communications brands keep pushing out to consumers; pricing and promotional communications are at an all time high, despite little evidence to show they are doing anything positive for the overall brand value.

So the question becomes, when does it all become too much, and how do you know when your efforts are becoming a genuine interruption? Chances are, you can easily spot it as a consumer (I invite readers to drop me a line to share their examples). But is it as easy to spot when we are the sender, before it becomes too late?

The group I referred to earlier – those who view time as the only true currency – I, of course, agree with their overall concept (time is the one thing you simply can’t buy more of). But most of people I’ve met of this ilk have little tolerance (or patience) for anything outside their own agenda. In a lot of ways, it can keep an individual closed off from trying new things, accepting new suggestions, or even keeping an open mind. However, in the past few weeks I’ve had to contact several brands (a few charities, and a much larger number of retailers) to tell them that enough is enough. Maybe I’m getting older. Maybe I’m getting wiser. But I value my time more these days, and if you’re going to hit “send ” before having any inclination whether that message might have any value whatsoever to me, particularly if I’ve given you enough business and subsequent data to know a great deal about me? Then you’re interrupting, and once you see it that way, well, then it’s just plain rude.