Now get Paid to Listen to Ads on Your Mobile Phone
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Mobile Phone subscriptions in India recently crossed 260 Million in India making it the 2nd largest mobile market in the World. Everyone in Mobile has been grappling with revenue models.
The telecom providers in India currently on an average make about $7 per subscriber. They are looking at newer ways to drive up that figure. They have been toying with the idea of VAS, Mobile TV, Mobile Wallets, M - Commerce, Internet Related Services and Location Based Services on Mobile among other things. VAS as it currently stands in India is primarily SMS based. The standard cricket alerts, astrology alerts, caller tunes, ringtones and the like are bringing in some amount of revenue for mobile phone operators. This however seems to be a saturated market. It was the “low hanging fruit” as a lot of people in Mobile like to call it.
Mobile TV is still a few years away as admitted by Manoj Dawane, the CEO of Mauj Telecom on WATShow. GPRS is still inaccessible to the critical mass although the number of people using GPRS is growing fervently. Simplicity in Mobile is the key to future revenues. That’s the one lesson that can be learnt from SMS driven VAS.
With this in mind, Airvoice has created a patented technology called HapAd - “a method of providing advertisement via telephones or mobile phones on user request”
This innovation allows a user to receive an ad before he is connected to a call. The ad typically lasts for 15 seconds. This is being made possible by integrating the mobile switching centers of telecom service providers with the high-end technology created by Airvoice, thereby allowing a smooth transition between the advertisement and call. The good part about this is that it’s an opt in mechanism. Thus consumers will not be bombarded with ads if they do not wish to receive them.
While according to Airvoice, the opt in idea is good because it allows advertisers to access “targeted markets”, I have my doubts with respect to that claim. The argument could be that consumers might factor in those 15 seconds while making a call and keep the receiver away from their ears till the call connects. Thus one can question the value to advertisers.
It’s most likely that consumers will be paid for listening to ads and thus they might sign up for this service only to save their mobile bills negating the idea that they are signing up because ads give them “value”. The net effect however, will be more money in the mobile eco system, which is a good thing.
On the other hand one could say that, Airvoice will tie up with mobile operators who have reams of data about consumers and thus they will be as contextual as one can be atleast with respect to the Mobile Space related to voice (unless of course our conversations are screened and we are offered ads then – which would be shameful, something that’s possible by the way!). So possibly the other ‘good’ thing about this innovation is that it won’t invade privacy.
Revenues will be shared between Airvoice, the subscriber, and the service provider. One isn’t exactly clear on the break-up of that revenue share so far.
The service is going to be test marketed in Chennai and some parts of Tamil Nadu in the Second Quarter of 2008.
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but havnt the “get paid to do something” models bombed everywhere after the initial hype?
they have. Which is what one of the concerns is. ultimately the service wont yield value to advertisers. In this case however, if Airvoice ties up with mobile service providers and service providers themselves push it as well, then one can see more consumers adopting the model. It’s likely that they (service providers) will push the service because they too are looking at ways of increasing revenue per customer. By getting the advertiser in the loop, here lies a fantastic opportunity. In the case of voice calls - consumers are always “doing this” i.e. the activity of calling thus they are integrating a revenue model into an already established habit. So on a rational level it should work. Having said that, consumers may just become immune to the ads over time and factor in those 15 seconds as i said above - so value is the keyword that i think is missing.
Harshil,
I agree with your point.. even long back I had blogged on a comparison between various “Get paid to read SMS ads” services.. and raised questions on conversion ratio. I hope you’ll like that:-
http://fundubytes.blogspot.com/2007/06/mginger-admadmobi-sms2india-are-they.html