Cellular operators across the country are working on a plan to set up a common mobile advertising exchange that will allow companies to advertise on mobile phones, based on their niche requirement of target audiences.

The exchange will provide profiles of cellphone subscribers across service providers. For instance, if you want to target customers with ARPUs of over Rs 1,000, you can do so through the common platform.

Under the aegis of GSM Association, the world body for GSM mobile operators, a Mobile Advertising Forum (consisting of members like Bharti Airtel and Vodafone-Essar Ltd) has already been set up in India to push mobile advertising, as well as address issues related to it.

Telecom operators are looking at ways to incentivise subscribers to accept advertising. These include giving them lower tariffs or more value for the same price in the form of extra talk time, or value-added services at a lower tariff.

A key requirement for mobile advertising, of course, is standardisation, a code of conduct for the industry and common formats for mobile ads. The forum is expected to address these issues.

Mobile ads have already been introduced by operators across the globe. Orange, for instance, has been into mobile advertising through SMS and MMS, which include sponsored content. O2 has announced that it will offer portal banners for 3G users, as well as in-game advertising.

In the US, Verizon and Sprint are testing how consumers react to short video ads on their phones.

Mobile operators in India, however, say there are many issues that need to be sorted out. First and foremost is whether service providers will be willing to share their subscriber base data and allow it on a common exchange.

Says a senior executive of Bharti Airtel, "Surely mobile advertising has a large potential. GSMA has given us some ideas to go forward. We have set up a small team among operators to examine various issues".