Many companies are using mobile advertising to target teenagers. However, some recent research from comScore shows that while U.S. kids ages 12-17 use are great users of mobile phones, they may not be particularly receptive to mobile ads.

The analysis comes from a comScore marketing analyst Jen Wu, and was written up in MediaPost by Tamaka Kee.

Some of the key points that Wu raised:

• teens love to communicate by mobile: they are about 50% more likely than the general population to use text messaging, to chat using IM, or to respond to a TV contest via a short code.
• while teenagers are very interested in (and capable of) using all the new technologies such as mobile video and internet browsing, the cost of these new features is often too high for them to afford.
• 68% of the US teens are on a payment plan where another member of the family is responsible for the bill, so any extra usage has to be agreed to in advance.

A second major obstacle for teens is that most do not have the most advanced handsets, and so do not have access to some of the newest data services. The most popular phone with teens today is the Motorola RAZR V3m, which was a leading edge phone 2 years ago. Teens often receive their handsets handed-down from an older family member, or as part of a family-pack.

So although teens are great users of mobile phones and love all the new technologies and services, it may be sometime before their financial situation lets them afford higher end handsets and more expensive services. And until that time, there will be some limits on how responsive they will be to mobile advertising campaigns.

Read the full MediaPost article. (Note: access to this article may require registration on the MediaPost website, but it’s free and MediaPost is a great resource.)