Combining the power of broadcast messaging with the personalization of one-on-one conversations, marketing through mobile phones has become increasingly popular since the use of SMS (or text messages) became a mainstream medium of communication. Since its rise in popularity, businesses have began to collect mobile phone numbers and send various messages containing wanted or unwanted content.

Through the years, it has become a legitimate advertising channel, mainly due to the fact that unlike email over the public internet, the carrier who monitors their own networks have set guidelines and best practices for the mobile media industryincluding mobile advertising.

Text-message marketing through various forms of SMS (Bluetooth, MMS, Infared, etc.) has expanded rapidly as a new channel to reach the consumer. Initially, though, SMS marketing received negative publicity for being a new form of spam as some advertisers purchased lists and sent unsolicited content to consumer’s phones. But as guidelines were established by the mobile operators, SMS has become the most popular branch of the Mobile Marketing industry.

According to the CTIA, an international wireless-communication organization, there were 233 million wireless subscribers in the U.S. alone at the end of 2006. During the last six months of 2006, text messaging was up to 93.8 billion messages from 48 billion messages in the same period of 2005.

Today, mobile marketing differs from most other forms of marketing communication in that it is often permission-based or consumer-initiated, which means that it usually requires the consent of the consumer to receive future communications. This points to a trend set by mobile marketing of consumer-controlled marketing communications.

According to a white paper by content services provider Air2Web (The State of Mobile Marketing: A Snapshot of Global Wireless Marketing Uptake), permission-based marketing is critical component of a successful mobile messaging campaign: People nowadays are accustomed to being asked whether they’d like to receive additional offers/news when downloading content from the Web. This opt-in process is even more critical in the wireless world. Additionally, each campaign you send out should also feature a quick and easy way to opt-out.

Being an easy, inexpensive way to get your message across to your customer base, text messaging is truly shaping into the next big wave of marketing. But text-message marketing, and all new media in general, should respect the consumer’s desire for permission-based models. For any advertising to be effective, it needs to utilize an approach that respects consumers privacy. Consumers have had enough of unwanted content, and they are embracing technologies that put them in complete control.