Perhaps the oldest and most unrealistic customer fantasy ever is to be paid to watch ads. Never mind that ads sponsor content — consumers feel sorely set up on by advertising and demand compensation. There was of course no dotcom millionaire who made his bucks by clicking banner ads, in spite of schemes that offered to pay people to surf.

But the basic concept has endured and is set to hit a new medium. Mobile marketing firms are making offers that sound almost too good to be true — choose from free SMS, get paid to be subjected to advertising, or maybe even both.mGinger.com started in April this year when Veerendra Shivhare, COO, hit upon the idea of targeted advertising, annoyed by the deluge of spam messages every day. His alternative: register with mGinger, submit a mobile number, choose the categories that you wish to receive ads about, specify the number of ads and the time they ought to be sent and you are on your way.

However, there is no guarantee you will start receiving ads as soon as you have registered, so it will be a while before you start raking in those extra bucks. Today just two months after inception mGinger boasts of 7,00,000 registered users. That’s an impressive number, Chaitanya Nallan, CEO, mGinger.com, says proudly, “We have grown through viral marketing and WOM and not spent anything so far on PR or advertising.” In the time honoured tradition of pyramid schemes, mGinger.com encourages you to tell friends about them and earn from the publicity. A user continues to make money if the ‘friend chain’ plumps for mGinger.

Not surprisingly, 31% of the total users registered are students trying to earn extra pocket money. Others who’ve opted in are engineers, consultants, managers, self-employed people and more. The largest number falls in the 22 – 25 year age-group which constitutes 38% of the pie. On the advertiser front, mGinger.com executed 10 ad campaigns in its first month and the advertisers included Travelmart India, Amity University, Ambe Bajaj, Myrent.in and more.

At present, they have received enquiries from 400-500 advertisers, but not all of them have registered. “Advertisers take time to decide and convincing them is a challenge,” says Nallan. To help the advertiser community better, mGinger.com recently launched adGinger.com. adGinger enables advertisers to target customers right down to the pincode level.

It is possible through the range of information that mGinger collects: “adGinger.com will give advertisers a lot of power to do targeted advertising,” says Nallan. One of the biggest challenges was sending out the right messages. Says Nallan, “People thought by joining mGinger they will be rich and can make a living out of it, but that is not the case. You can make pocket money, but not a living.”