Abstract: Methods, apparatuses and systems enabling delivery of advertising to third-party short message service (SMS) content providers. An SMS content provider sends a request to an ad server for an advertisement to append to an outgoing mobile terminated message. The ad server retrieves an advertisement from the ad database that meets available character constraints as well as targeting parameters based on user area code, time, content-channel, and content of the message. If targeting parameters are satisfied, the ad server sends advertisement to SMS content provider to append to outgoing message. The ad server sends receipt of delivery to reporting database. Methods, apparatuses and systems are described for retrieving advertisements for delivery to mobile users, tracking retrieval of advertisements, and receiving compensation in exchange for advertisement distribution.