So far, a lot has been said about ring back tones in this blog; today, I will focus on Ring Back Advertising.
I have often been involved in discussions on whether to play advertisements to those calling a subscriber or to a subscriber when he/she makes a call. I believe there is no right answer to this. The Mobile Marketing Association recently published a white paper on marketing with ring back tones. The paper also does not give an answer but suggests that at least either the calling or called party should agree to listen/play the advertisement.
This brings us to the question: what is then better? And again, there is no single answer to this. So what I want to share with you today are some ways to evaluate which alternative is better for your particular case.
The advantage of ring back advertising is that you can offer targeted advertisers because you know – to some degree – the person who is using the phone. The choice on who should listen is closely related to how precise you want this targeting to be.
The straightforward answer may be to play it to the subscriber when he/she makes a call, after all, he was the one who opted into the service and so he will listen to the ads. For the advertiser it means that he will be targeting exactly the profile they have planned. On the other hand, this limits the audience. Clearly, ring back advertising subscribers will be only a portion of your whole subscriber base, not to say the mobile users in your market. In short, with this approach you will reach fewer listeners but targeting will be precise.
So what happens if you choose to play ads to those calling the subscriber? Well, clearly you will reach more people. A substantial amount of callers will not be ring back advertising subscribers or not even belong to the same operator, therefore you reach people you could not reach otherwise. The drawback: you don’t know exactly who is calling the subscriber. This doesn’t mean, however, that the ads are no longer targeted. The majority of the calls received from a subscriber are from the people they interact with the most, meaning people around the same age, with a similar lifestyle and similar interests, so the majority of ads still reach the type of audience they are intended for but not 100%. We can assume that a 15 year old teenager may occasionally receive calls from their parents. In summary, you increase your audience but loose some precision on targeting.
Finally, of course there is the point: is it acceptable to play ads to callers who did not ask for it only because the person they are calling is a subscriber? Well, the answer is simple, if he has the right to play music to his callers, isn’t it his right to choose to play something else as well?
What do you think? Who should listen to the ads?
The idea look new and innovative, but I have same doubts about the targeting. How the operators/ service provider will recognize the user and play the ads which suits his need.
It can’t Be targeted based on Subscribers Rather it will be according to Region and Calling activities.. Yet it failed to gain popularity in India.
Targeting goes beyond region. This is a service that subscribers opt into. Upon subscription, subscribers can be asked to provide certain information that can later be used for choosing the advertisements.
Yes this is possible we are doing it in some countries.
Thanks