ired of the beeps that herald senseless marketing campaigns on the cell phone? How about getting paid for every ad? Sounds far fetched? Not really. These were the questions that set the ball rolling for Veerendra Shivhare, Chaitanya Nallan and Anil Sharma, the founders of mGinger.com. It is a site that pays customers for every ad message they receive on their mobiles. The strategy is simple, if not unique. Sign up, select the category you are interested in and after the necessary verification procedures, the service gets activated. The ads consist of news, infotainment, vouchers and other categories. For every ad opened, the reader gets 20 paise; forwarding the same to friends and relatives gets another 10 paise. The consumer can also specify the time at which he wants to receive the messages. mGinger has tied up with various service providers for this.

Chaitanya Nallan, CEO, mGinger, thinks that from an advertiser's point of view, this medium is powerful. He elaborates, "Precision targeting and accurate response measurement (through coupon or call-back ads) make ads on mobile phones most effective. It's a personal medium; it's viral (forwarded from one consumer to another), and much cheaper than other media." ... more