Mobile calls could be free, thanks to advertising

Stuart Corner
Tuesday, 10 April 2007 11:24

Opinion and Analysis

So far Blyk has given little indication of what users will have to tolerate in order to enjoy its free service. It has said that it is targeting 16-24 year-olds and offering "free mobile phone calls and texts in return for receiving advertising to their mobile handsets."

BusinessWeek reported Blyk's other co-founder, veteran advertising executive, Antti Öhrling, saying: "The fundamental principle is that advertising never interferes with primary function of the phone...If you do it in the right way, it's not just how much [advertising] can you tolerate—it's something people find useful and fun."

 Blyk says that it will "work closely with...advertisers to pioneer usage of its creative ad formats and sophisticated profiling system," adding that "The member profiling enables brands to build a dialogue with a highly relevant group of young consumers who welcome the interaction and information. The impact of the campaigns can then be tracked in real time, allowing advertisers to view, assess and adjust their activity accordingly."

This type of targeted mobile advertising is about to happen in Australia. As iTWire reported last week,  UK based mobile marketing specialist Txt4 is ramping up in Australia with a trial enabling SMS messages to be send to an advertiser's standard 13 response number rather than to a mobile or premium 19 number. And it sees this as a prerequisite to advertisers starting to exploit the full potential of mobile marketing.

Mobile users become particularly attractive to advertisers because advertisers can build a direct one to one link with each customer or potential customer. The corollary of this is that the mobile user becomes more receptive to the advertising message because it relates to a product or service in which they have an expressed interest.

In short a free or greatly reduced price mobile service funded by advertising dollars could well take off. And if it does the losers are likely to be the traditional recipients of the advertising dollar.