Adfortel today announced the release of it’s mobile voice advertising service, VoiceAds Engine. What does it do? It takes ringback tones, and turns them into advertisement. According to Adfortel, we spend 15 seconds on average listening to dial-tones while we wait for someone to pick up the phone. VoiceAds is an opt-in service that sticks an audio advertisement in there instead.
The big change in version 2.0 is that for people who have subscribed to the service, it’s not just outgoing calls that get hit with ads. Incoming calls to that users phone will also hear ads instead of ringback tones. Adfortel holds a national patent on the technology and an international patent is pending.
From the release:
Igor Hendriksen, Adfortel’s managing director: “Adfortel’s solution is a very attractive offering for operators who want to continue to grow market share by unlocking new revenue streams. The solution’s architecture and capabilities allow for a speedy and cost-effective deployment with fast return on investment. The new version of VoiceAds is interesting for operators with poor ringback tone results and operators that are considering both ringback tone services and mobile audio advertising for their roadmaps.”
What we think?
What an excellent way to get people to stop calling you! If I knew that ringing a friend would get me a 15 second plea to change operator, I might change my mind.
That aside, I think this a bad addition to a previously good service. I interviewed Igor Hendriksenn, Managing Director of Adfortel at MWC, and I was impressed with his pitch. This is a smart new location for advertising. But adding the service to incoming calls as well does defeats the purpose of having it opt-in in the first place, though. The entire point of opt-in is that you’re not annoying people with push-advertising – which this new function neatly subverts.
