Mobile phone content advertising is the promotion of ring tones, games and other mobile phone services. Such services are usually subscription-based and use the short message service (SMS) system to join up to them. The advertising and sale of Free Nextel Ringtones in particular has seen a massive growth in recent years, with some commercial breaks, particularly on music television channels and in motor racing especially NASCAR, with Sprint Nextel as the series sponsor, being dominated by such adverts. Advertising in newspapers and magazines has also become popular.

However, mobile phone advertising is banned in some outlets, especially in NASCAR. On June 19, 2003, NASCAR prohibited advertising by any new mobile phone companies who were not in the sport at the time; mobile phone companies who were involved could stay with their current teams, but once they break from their current teams, they could not advertise in NASCARs premier series. This prohibition was a byproduct of the new ten-year contract with Nextel Communications.

Motorsport advertising has been prevalent, especially to replace tobacco in 2000, Alltel sponsored a car in the NASCAR Busch Series for Herzog Motorsports, and rookie driver Jimmie Johnson. That partnership lasted only one year, as a result of Greg Penske joining the Board of Directors for Alltel. The firm then moved its sponsorship to Penske Racing with driver Ryan Newman. BellSouth in 1997 began advertising with Team Sabco (later Chip Ganassi Racing) before merging its mobile phone business with Southwestern Bell to form Cingular Wireless in 2001, Cingular then joined Richard Childress Racing in 2002. Both firms are grandfathered under NASCARs deal with Nextel.