@dvocable

Mobile service provider Airtel has tied up with UK-based Affle to provide SMS 2.0 – a new generation SMS service in which SMS messages will have colour fonts and lots of better looking emoticons. The ads are supposedly going to be shown on the mobile phone after someone sends a SMS, in those few seconds when you see the ’sending message’ icon.

Tolerable so far! But if this becomes like you have to listen to an ad jingle before sending a SMS message, I have serious doubts how many users would opt for it.

Before this, we have seen two new start ups based on a similar consensual SMS ad marketing model – mGinger and mGarlic. These services allow their users to receive ads of their mobile phones and pay them in return. The ads served are based on the user’s specifications.

How does this work? You get 20 paise for each SMS you receive on your mobile phone. You can get around 10 SMS ads in a day. Then, you can refer your friends to the service. For every ad that your friend receives, you get 10 paise. Further, for every advert that your friend’s friend receives, you get 5 paise. The chain stops here – not like the Amway chain that you can extend endlessly :-) You can also specify what time of the day you can receive ads.

These services are new and so you might not start receiving ad messages instantly though.

Now I wonder how many users would like to participate in such schemes. The people at mGinger and mGarlic insist that it is more for the information that users should sign up and not entirely for the money. After all, how much can you earn accumulating Rs.2 per for 10 ad messages a day. But where is the lack of information? Today, if I need anything, I just need to search on the Net. In addition to that, we are anyway bombarded with ads on TV, newspapers, magazines, billboards, etc. However, this is just one way of looking at it.

On the other hand, there might be mobile phone users willing to receive such SMS messages in the hope that they can at least recover their mobile phone expenses.

Recently there was another news that talked about Cellebrum planning to pay its consumers royalty fees for ringtones and pictures composed by them if they are downloaded by others users. 

The story quoted the Cellebrum spokesperson saying that they are piloting user-generated content in Punjab and Karnataka. Users can generate their own content and upload it to their data centre. Each such content will be protected through a username and password. On any content that is downloaded the user who generated that content will be paid a royalty.

Seems like interesting times for the mobile phone users. More interesting times for the advertiser.