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Mobile operators increasingly see advertising as a way of combating falling voice revenue, as it allows brands to target consumers based on their location and at times of the day when they are hard to reach.

However, delegates at the Reuters Technology, Media and Telecoms summit heard that the technology is currently at an experimental stage, with many brands and mobile operators wary of alienating customers.

The head of Germany's T-Mobile Hamid Akhavan also said mobile advertising would be held

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back by the large number of different phones and their capabilities: "By the time you say how many countries you cover and what your share of the market is, how many people have that kind of phone and how many of them are interested in Nike, you end up with an inventory of 6,000. And are you going to go to Nike and waste their time over 6,000 potential customers?

"In Europe for instance all the big names have to work together, look at the inventory and try and figure out a way for us to share it in a very cooperative way and together go and pitch. That's the only way it is going to work," he said.

Akhavan said operators were starting to discuss this but that it was not a top priority.

"It will be slow, it will take time but it will be there," Maurice Levy, chief executive of advertising group Publicis, told delegates.

"Why? Because it will be in the interest of the phone companies, consumers and advertisers. So it will be very difficult to resist."

Forecasts suggest the mobile ad market could generate revenue of around $24 billion within the next four years.