For all the talk on the efficacy of mobile advertising there is a suggestion that it’s not the slam-dunk of targeted personalization some people would have you think. Nielsen had released the results of a global survey on how much people trust different forms of advertising—conducted with 26,486 internet users in 47 markets from Europe, Asia Pacific, the Americas and the Middle East. The result is that “text ads on mobile phones” was the least trusted with only 18 percent indicating trust, well behind “recommendations from consumers” at 78 percent, newspapers at 63 percent, “brand websites” (60 percent) and even “online banner ads” at 26 percent, as noted at MobiAd.

While that’s not fantastic news, it’s not really that bad—SMS ads are the only form of mobile-specific advertising on the list, and there’s a lot of other forms of mobile advertising and marketing. The survey showed that 49 percent of people trust “e-mail I signed up for”, which clearly excludes spam and is therefore not a direct comparison with SMS advertising. In many parts of the world SMS advertising is done well, people have to sign up to receive messages and can easily opt out—but in many other parts of the world SMS advertising is basically spam on mobile phones, and that’s likely to drag down the global average.