London's commuters are a front-line battleground for mobile operators in their war for more subscribers.
Last Thursday's edition of the freebie Metro newspaper contained no less than ten ads - nearly all a quarter page or larger - for mobile phone services.
A cursory flick through Metro's pages would suggest the paper makes more money from phone ads than any other advertiser segment.
What an opportunity then for the phone companies to use the Metro 'channel' to tell a captive audience about all the lovely stuff they can download to keep themselves occupied on the 7.42 into Kings Cross.
What a missed opportunity more like. Of the ten ads only one - for Vodafone - mentions content overtly (exclusive download of Madge's latest single), while a full-pager for the O2 iPhone merely hints at what's possible through use of pictures.
Even 3 UK, which until recently was telling the world it was a 'mobile media company', seems to have given up the ghost. It has two ads, both pushing texts and minutes.
It's not just off-the-page operator marketing that's letting the content side down a bit. A colleague recently received the following text from Orange: "We've reviewed your phone usage and the great news is you are already on the best plan."
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He was so relieved to hear that news, let me tell you. What a waste of bandwidth. Thankfully seconds later he received another text encouraging him to check out the latest games on Orange World. Shame he hates games, but still.
Text campaigns can never really do content justice. Surely that's where 'old media' - print, TV, radio, etc - can come in to play as those mediums are so good at getting the all important experience across to consumers.
Last week Nokia revealed a few more details about its upcoming Comes With Music offering, which launches later this year.
Speaking a few weeks back at CTIA, Tero Ojanpera, Nokia's EVP of entertainment and communities, said the scheme will be supported by a marketing campaign worth "tens of million of dollars".
Last Tuesday he reiterated that the aim of the campaign will be to "get people into the habit of downloading and listening to music on their phone".
You can bet Metro will be getting a slice of that action.
