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Workable click-through mobile advertising will require the following two things which are, currently, not the norm:
1) Fast cellular networks (Ev-DO is the first of these).
2) Low-cost unlimited data plans.
Even with the above, I think it could be argued that it will only work for the following two categories of people:
a) People with lots of free time on-the-go (e.g., students with lots of spare time between classes).
b) People who don't realize that these are ads and are "fooled" into clicking on them.
With the current networks (which aren't super-fast), savvy users on-the-go aren't apt to click on links without giving them some serious thought first. I've got a Treo 650 w/Sprint's 2.5G Vision network. It's a comparitively cheap, unlimited data plan, so I don't have to worry about how much bandwidth I'm using. But it's still quite slow compared to my DSL at home, so I don't click on every link I *want* to click on, and I certainly don't click on links that look anything like ad links.
For at least the short-term, I think the only viable mobile advertising is going to be brand enforcement per-view advertising where the advertiser doesn't expect the user to ever click-through to their site (from a mobile device), but simply hopes that the placement of their name on the site will have a positive impact for their brand. This takes the form of a "Sponsored by Company X" blurb somewhere on the mobile site.
Easy access to ringtones and mobile apps is a good idea, but this will require more effort by the advertisers (and/or more proactivity by the site owner), and will come by way of site/device-specific affiliate links. The reason for this is that ringtones and apps/applets are not a generic item. You've got people browsing via devices that use the Palm OS, WM, S60, and Java-based phones, each of which have incompatible apps and often incompatible formats for ringtones, etc.
I've got much more I could blather on about this subject, as it's something I think about from time to time, but I'll leave it at that for now.
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