The web-to-mobile calling efforts are starting to get interesting. Last week Jaxtr talked about how it planned to make money by selling ads, and today Jangl launches its own ad efforts tied to a partnership with Pudding Media. The plan is to target pre-roll ads on Jangl’s existing voice calls and SMS messages by using location and demographic information provided in the profiles on various social media sites.
Jangl has already made money by selling the ability to receive calls without giving out a phone number on dating web sites, but the ad efforts are targeting bigger money. Jangl’s CEO Michael Cerda estimates the CPMs are around $30 to $60 for SMS messages ads, and around $10 for voice. Now that revenue is entering the equation, we should soon have less subjective ways to judge who is successful in this crowded market. Sales are a better metric than user numbers when it comes to figuring out which services will succeed.
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6:58 AM PT
[...] and tried to use social networking widgets to grow its customer base, in the hope that it could make up the cost of free calling on advertising. The only place where it found success was amongst the online dating sites, where it allowed people [...]
11:21 AM PT
[...] startup is well-funded or has a famous founder, the ad unit might be something novel like a widget, pre-roll voice ads on a mobile phone, or Beacon. Otherwise it’s generally based on banners and Google AdWords [...]
15 comments so far
8:22 AM PT
Stacey this is just a terrible idea in my opinion. THese guys - JAxtr and now JAngl have to prove their value proposition beyond what they have shown so far. I mean come on, now they want to make money from ads. the numbers cerda is throwing around don’t make sense and i wonder how many calls they have to do in order to make money…. i mean real money. What a joke.
9:59 AM PT
Stacey and Om: I have come across rates as high as $30 cpm (cost per 1000 calls). Voodoovox is supposed to have offered Skype to cover its $15/month SkypeOut package cost to customers in return for the ads it would bring in.
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10:03 AM PT
I’d LOVE to know how they got $30+CPM on SMS for ads. Is there any data to back up that claim?
-Todd
10:06 AM PT
Om: In the real world, far outside of the Valley, real people talk and text, and they use Jangl because it’s valuable for them. SMS and voice ads are a logical extension of this business. Those ads let marketers reach a very mobile audience, and they support cool new services in social networks where a younger crowd hangs out — a crowd that doesn’t expect to pay for anything.
10:14 AM PT
When I say interesting, I’m not endorsing their ideas. But now that the betas are over and it’s time to prove the business model, they’ll have a limited amount of time to prove it works. They have to play by real-world business rules now. I gotta think it’s a buyer’s market for advertisers, so I wonder how those CPMs will hold up, especially as voice ad offerings increase.
11:03 AM PT
@Todd, The CEO of 4INFO has said his company splits CPMs of $40 for SMS ads with publishers such as NBC and USA Today. That’s pretty high quality content and the ads have pretty good click-though rates.
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11:25 AM PT
VoodooVox are the ones making all the money for these companies. Check their website.
12:53 PM PT
Hello everyone,
Scott Hamilton here, ceo of VoodooVox. Perhaps I can clarify a couple things.
What we do is insert targeted ad-supported media into the call stream. Notice i say ad-supported media rather than ads, because no one wants ads on their calls. And it’s not simply splitting semantic hairs; it really is ad-supported media.
A couple examples should clarify.
We work with a free conference call provider. At the welcome msg the caller will here a very brief announcement along the lines of “this free conference call is brought to you XYZ, the best source for blue widgets.” Nothing exciting or lucrative here, but then when the caller is put on hold until the moderator comes in, we deliver headline news into the call stream that is ad supported. So rather than listening to Kenny G, you’ll get the Wall street update, or election recaps, sports headlines, or news of the weired, or whatever other content the publisher (ie, the con call compnay) wants their callers to hear. Many of you have probably heard this service before on your con calls.
Another example would be with one of our calling card partners. Say we detect that a call is originating in NYC and terminating in the Dominican Republic, after the person has entered their PIN and waiting for the intl call to be connected, we’ll come in and let the caller know that American Airlines has introduced their 3rd flight of the week from JFK to Santo Domingo, and they can press 9 to learn more.
The bottom line is real simple: In-Call Media MUST have benefits for the caller or it won’t be effective for the advertiser or the call publisher. We are the only entity that is functioning as a network. we work with hundreds of call publishers and hundreds of millions of calls on a monthly basis. We give marketers a one-stop source to promote their products and services directly to an engaged audience. Done right, In-Call Media works really well. Done poorly and it can suck as badly as any other type of crappy advertising, and we don’t let that happen on our network.
Rates are pretty good. As our network grows and the advertiser pool grows with it, the eCPM is falling from the $25+ range, but they’re still holding quite strong relative to most other interactive media.
Joese (above) is right. We are serving ads into Jangl’s call volume, and just about every other widget company out there that has a telephony component to its service. I can’t tell you if I’m covering their costs of processing the call, but I can assure you I’m the only 3rd party writing them regular checks.
And on that note I’ll end for now, with a comment for all telco developers: if you can generate a domestic call, I can monetize it. Today.
J. Scott Hamilton
President/CEO
VoodooVox
jsh@voodoovox.com
1:43 PM PT
@ Tim Johnson,
I am just going to throw a rough number out there. @ 10 CPM, you would need a million calls to make $10,000. Let me know how that scales into a big revenue stream.
Even in the real world, it be hard for Jangl to get people to talk that much. What kind of minute per call are you guys getting? How many calls are you guys initiating every month?
7:38 PM PT
@Om. You and I are very much on the same page: audio ads for cheap long distance isn’t big business right now, but could be huge over time. We agree with Voodoovox on that. And, at the risk of repeating the refrain of our Jangl/Om briefings, Jangl is not cheap long distance. We’re not in the pack of VoIP startups racing to zero. In fact, Jangl makes money two ways: one rev stream is subscription-based $ in dating/personals sites, and another is free, ad-supported voice and SMS services in social networks. And our ad types are more than just voice — branded voice pre-rolls are only one part of it. Even more lucrative: SMS branded inserts, interactive SMS with shortcode or WAP link response, audio pre-rolls with interactive response via IVR or shortcode. Our customers asked for SMS, and we delivered that starting in December with Bebo, later Facebook and so on, and our adoption and usage have both increased dramatically. SMS usage will soon surpass voice usage on Jangl, and there’s more margin there, though I’d never downplay audio’s potential. Anyway, wanted to update you (and everyone else) while we have your attention. Nutshell? Subscription + advertising = good business. That was always the Jangl plan, and why we first started recruiting media folks 2 years ago. Now, about 1/3 of our employees come from media, so I would say we’re built for success here. That said, it’s always good to hear your thoughts — hope you’re well.
10:07 PM PT
@Tim
What is the total call volume you are doing from your social networking efforts? and what is that total volume you hope to achieve in next 12 months? That should basically answer the question about advertising revenues.
As you might have noticed, i think your dating/personal side of the business makes sense, if not the scale your investors might have imagined.
10:09 PM PT
@ J Scott Hamilton,
Email me dude. Also, tell me how big are those checks you are sending these guys - be it Jangl or Jaxtr or whomever.
Thanks and look forward to hearing from you
10:57 AM PT
scott, great note. om, i’m not sure any startup would share that info on a blog.
6:29 PM PT
@scott
Where’s the data?
@marcel
companies are sharing this type of information publicly. Specially when they are hyping their business models. Not sure what Scott has to lose here since the barrier to entry is already well known in across the industry.
11:10 AM PT
@ Alex
Not sure which data you might be referring to. I’m obviously not going to say a word about the call volume of any of our publishers, you’ll need to ask them for that info.
The 500 or so publishers on my network do about 250M calls a month. I’m not selling them all yet, but we’re getting close. My total network call volume should exceed 1B a month in 2008.
Barriers to entry? Industry? What industry? I wish In-Call Media was an industry, though the best we can hope for is channel or sector. As to barrier to entry, I have to assume it’s most people aren’t silly enough to dabble in open standards telco and try and build a new ad channel at the same time.
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