Monitoring your ads . . . your print ads

Advertisers have long known that 1/2 of their expenditure on advertising doesn't work but they've not known which half.  And publishers desperately seek a way to monitor the effectiveness of prints ads so that they can keep their customers spending through a recession.

What if there was a way to track advertising using a mobile phone?

Here's how ad monitorng would work:

1) The publisher of the magazine or newspaper runs a promotion encouraging its readers to take pictures of ads they see in the publication and send them in.  In return the reader gets entered into a raffle for big prizes.

2) Readers snap picture of ads (presumably ones they like) and send them in via MMS.

3) The publishers sends back a response to the reader's phone via SMS confirming entry into the raffle and maybe a coupon for future purchase.

4) The publisher shares pictures received with advertisers to prove that readers are viewing the ads. Oh and one more thing. The advertiser now would know the telephone number of potential consumers for its products. 

Is this really possible?  Yes it's already happening enabled by a company called SnapNow.

Another example of how messaging via MMS and SMS has quickly become the killer mobile app changing our commercial world.