Rolling Stone and Men’s Health magazines are both testing new advertising programmes in the US where readers are encouraged to take cameraphone pictures of icons on ads, then send them to a certain number. In exchange for doing this, they’ll receive more information or an offer from the advertiser. For example in Rolling Stone’s current issue, one of the offers is a motorcycle ringtone for Allstate’s motorcycle insurance and a video preview of The Discovery Channel’s new season of “Man vs. Wild.”

Could this be the boost that print advertising needs in the face of increasing competition from both online and mobile advertising? Only the other day ABI Research announced that it believed mobile search advertising growth will expand from $813 million in 2008 to $5 billion by 2013.

My only question is with all of these offers becoming available, how much will my wife’s phone bill be now?

Paul Stallard