I have in the recent past seen a host of advertisers and mobile shortcode operators treat this medium the same way as many other mediums. Most of them are "text and response" campaigns. But, I certainly believe mobile offers greater opportunities and what is needed is a bit of imagination and forgetting what one has learnt from other media. Paul Golding makes an interesting point about this:
"...the ability to reach consumers at any time and in any place, with the added potential to know the user’s context (e.g. location) is potentially valuable to content and service providers. If they know how to monetise the “mobile attention” of the user, then let them pay to do so.The challenge is trying to normalize and define the economics of engagement.
The problem here is that the mobile world is not like the Internet. There are multiple ways of engaging with the users. Whereas those from the Internet world (e.g. Mads Moller from Google) were talking about banners and text ads, those from the messaging world, like Arie Baak from LogicaCMG, were talking about “in-service” ads like messages appended to top-up and voicemail alerts etc.
Understanding the context of the user was discussed a lot. Operators know a good deal about their customers. There’s a lot of information buried away in call records, texting profiles and other sources of context. Add location to this and the potential exists to track the intent of users in a powerfully unique way. Indeed, operators have access to a resource that is so powerful that it scares the likes of Google and other ad-brokers. An operator can track everything the user does (i.e. every site visited, every number called) whereas Google can only track your search habits. Even the most sophisticated web-tracking agencies can’t track every site visited (i.e. using cookies).
No doubt there is potential to exploit and monetize the rich assets available to operators. However, the question is how.