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Would you download an advert to your phone? Over Bluetooth?

Technology makes it hard to advertise. It sounds as if that should be the other way around: and the story of the Bluetooth  "BlueCasting" advert campaign for Coldplay seems to contradict it, when nearly 14% of phone users volunteered to read adverts beamed to their mobiles at train stations. But will it always be like that?

The technology seems to have been a surprise to the marketing world, despite the fact that it was announced back in March 2004, and despite the fact that Tiger Telematics, the marketing company behind the Gizmondo device, has been pioneering a very similar "opt-in to adverts" scheme.

According to NetImperative, 13,000 fans downloaded data into their phones when offered. The "data" included free video clips, audio tracks, interviews with the members [right, Chris Martin] and pictures. The offer wasn't made over SMS marketing, however: the phones were targeted by a posted which looked for Bluetooth wireless, and beamed a message asking if they wanted to see the promo.

The Gizmondo idea is more overt: the Tiger Telematics proposal was to give subscribers free video clips if they agreed to accept a certain number of adverts. Both systems look forward to an age when marketers require the cooperation of the customer before promotions can reach them.

Response from many readers of NewsWireless has been hostile. "Intrusive" was one commonly used word. "Why should I have to cope with interruptions?" asked one interviewee. "If this becomes common, I'll just switch off Bluetooth," said another.

The promotors, however, record company Parlophone, say they're really happy: they got 13,000 positive responses, and they reckon this is at least 10,000 more than they'd get standing in the station handing out samples.

The company which came up with the idea, Filter UK, expects the Bluecast idea to work well in China, where half the phone owners are said to be wireless phone users. According to The Inquirer, that's where the next promotions will be tried out.

But the existence of Bluetooth viruses, and the trends of advert filtering technology, suggest that this may be a temporary success, purely because of the novelty value.

"Just follow the steps below, and you'll get great, free content!" says the Bluecasting blurb, which goes on to give a five-point guide to making sure people can receive the promos.

But the experience of other consumers who downloaded tempting-seeming offers into their phones was negative: at the Helsinki athletics World Championships, the novelty tempted a similar proportion of the attendees to accept a less harmless download - specifically, the Cabir virus.

Increasingly, web browsers are being enhanced with software to block adverts, by "blacking" the advert servers. Digital video recorders are being used to fast-forward through recorded TV so as to skip commercial breaks, and direct mail advertising over email is becoming next to impossible, with spam filters rejecting anything not specifically listed as acceptable.

It looks as if the success of these new technologies depends heavily on maintaining a high quality of "editorial content" in the promotional downloads, to sweeten the marketing message by making the adverts desirable in themselves.