With over 700-million people using mobile phones in India, the mobile advertising industry is expected to grow by around 300 per cent to reach a turnover of Rs 200 crore over the next 2-3 years, industry experts said.

Mobile advertising is a form of advertising where marketers target mobile-users for marketing of their products and services.

"The number of mobile-users is rising significantly with 10-15-million new additions every month. Also, since the cost of interaction and cost of transaction is much lower in this medium as compared to TV, print or radio, marketers are using mobiles to promote their services and products.

Therefore, we expect the industry to grow to Rs 200 crore in the next 2-3-years," leading mobile VAS company Mobile2Win Head Mobile Marketing, Amit Lall, told PTI here.

There are around 700-million mobile users in India and the number is increasing by 10-15 million every month. Of these, nearly 50-60 million users are active mobile Internet users while around 150-million people have activated GPRS on their mobile phones, he said.

The advertising industry in India now is over Rs 30,000 crore of which the Internet online marketing is around Rs 1,000 crore and mobile advertising is Rs 25-30 crore.

"We expect the industry to grow by 100 per cent to Rs 50-crore next year," Lall said. .

While using traditional media for marketing such as print, television or radio, marketers are not sure whether the consumer would take notice of the promotional campaign or not.

The main advantage of the new medium is that it offers brand experience across different touch points, he said.

However, the rate of conversion in this medium is very less as the mobile marketing industry in India is at a very nascent stage, Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) President, Subho Roy, said.

"Mobile advertising in India is still at a nascent stage.

The understanding about the medium is less and people tend to think that mobile advertising means SMS advertising.

The conversion of ads to actual business is almost 1-2 per cent and 8-10 per cent in case of free offerings. But there is a huge opportunity for this industry to grow especially after the penetration of 3G," he said.