Would You Put Ads On Your Homescreens For Free Mobile Service?

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Moolah Mobile is teaming up with SurgePhone Wireless to offer people a new way to pay their cell phone bills -- by putting ads on their homescreens. Moolah CEO Vernell Woods (pictured above) said the startup has already been offering gift cards and other rewards to users who view its homescreen ads. So this is a similar model, except instead of earning gift cards, the ads are subsidizing cell phone service from Surge. The ads show up on users' homescreens during interstitial moments between using apps, so the goal is to offer free service without consumers having to change their behavior. Woods said all that ad time adds up, with "the average person who's using their phone on a consistent basis" viewing "easily between two to three hours" of homescreen ads each day. And that's enough to pay for the "equivalent" of Surge's $10 monthly plan. On the other hand, if for some reason a subscriber isn't hitting the necessary total, Woods said they can also earn more points by accepting offers or taking surveys. The subsidized wireless service will roll out in Florida, Virginia, Georgia and Texas initially, with an aim of reaching 40,000 locations by the end of the year.

Comments

Not only no

[e3m4n]

Not only no, but fuck no. Have you people not learned exactly how deep that fucking rabit hole will go? They OWN you when they give you free shit in exchange for being their whore!! Didnt Facefuck tesch you anything?!?!?!

Re:Not only no

[e3m4n]

I like my TVs to be dumb HDMI inputs redirected from a receiver where my other devices output video. I dont need a camera on my streaming devices and my ps4 VR only gets plugged in when I want to do some vr shit. I might be paranoid, but its probably because way back in the day my teachers made me read Animal Farm and 1984.

Re:Not only no

[sconeu]

Came here to post this EXACT comment.

Well, at least the first sentence. The rest is true, but I was just going to stop at fuck no.

Re:Not only no

[rtb61]

From a more sensible business perspective. Honestly why would you spend money advertising to people who can not pay for a basic mobile phone plan. You are spending advertising dollars to sell nothing because you are advertising to people who can not afford to spend much of anything and have very little choice in their consumer habits.

Technically it is a scam targeted at advertiser, getting them to buy worthless ads. It really is getting messy in ad space, people who can afford to buy product can also afford to by ad free content, people who can not afford to buy ad free content are the getting ads for products they can not afford to buy.

To be blunt outside of politics, why spend money advertising to, well, cough, cough, losers. Kind of a waste of money, outside of politics, yeah those, well, cough, cough, idiots will vote for whom ever they are told often enough, to vote for.

It is forcing ads and gross invasions of privacy and targeted manipulation that creates the problems for the rest of us and the reason why would should political target politicians to cripple the likes of M$, Google, Facebook et al.

Re:Not only no

[ctilsie242]

Exactly. Knowing previous history, even with ads, they will soon start charging a fee for "maintenance", then in no time, people will be paying the full cost of the mobile carrier again... and have ads. This has happened before. Cable TV is a good example, where it was initially ad-free, paid for by subscribers. Then, a few ads between shows. Now, you pay for the same, perhaps more ads as you get by watching OTA TV.

I'm would not be surprised if the ads would become more invasive over time. Perhaps demanding you watch a 2 minute spot before you can call, or watching 30 second ads per megabyte of bandwidth used. Of course, any of the data on the phone will be fair game, including geolocation, voice transcriptions of phone calls, screenshots of apps in use, etc.

Re:Not only no

[coofercat]

Whilst I agree with what you're saying, the likes of Amazon seem to be doing very well selling the Kindle Fire, at massive discount, subsidised by ads. FWIW, I've bought two - more on that in moment. Those things are wall-to-wall ads - on the lock screen, on your home screen, in every app you run - everywhere. All so you can save some money on the purchase price. It's a way to buy a 'proper brand' device at a 'chinese knock-off' price, and in some sense takes the risk out of that purchase.

In my case, I bought them for the kids. The 'kids mode' turns off every single ad, and limits what apps they can use to the ones I allow them to have. For us brits, that means I can load it up with BBC Iplayer Kids + some cbeebies apps and then hand the tablet to my kids knowing they can do what the hell they want without ever seeing any 'bad' (or even questionable) content, and also never, ever seeing an ad. Perfect! When they get old enough that I can take off the training wheels, they'll get a chinese knock-off tablet instead.

Back to the topic at hand - you'd have to be an idiot to want a 'free' phone that shoves apps at you day and night. Given that phones on contract don't cost much (at least, not 'ordinary' phones on 'ordinary' contracts), just pay up the £30/month and be done with it. You won't get an iPhoneX for free on these schemes, so it's not like you'd be getting a 'better' phone for less money than you'd be doing on contract.

Re:Not only no

[toebob]

The target demographic isn't always too poor to afford the products advertised. When you're poor you get money in small windfalls and you spend it quickly before it disappears on its own.

Payday comes around, or tax refund time, or welfare check time - whatever it is - and the advertisers want to make sure their product is right at the top of the minds of people who are yearning for something to make them happy. Many will gladly splurge on expensive sneakers or as-seen-on-TV gadgets to try to temporarily forget about normal life.

Maybe they can't pay for a monthly cell phone bill but they can certainly buy stuff.

Re:Not only no

[jellomizer]

There is a key difference between mobile service and free access to a website.
The reason for Ads on websites, is because many of them are nearly hard to monetize. Back in the early 2000's we talked about micropayments where you would be charged a fraction of a cent to hit a webpage. However that never caught on. Ads on most websites are the best way for them to make money, as their business model is based on trying to make it a popular place to go to. The economic problem is making a complex website is expensive, however it handles a lot of users for its investment so it may lead to a dollar per user. But charging people a small amount for access is just annoying to the users who can find somewhere else for free. So the Ad model came to be.
However for Mobile service we can charge the individual, for it. Because it is one bill for a unified service, and they can pick what they want more speed, less speed, unlimited, bandwidth caps...

Re:Not only no

[Anonymous Coward]

It starts with ads paying for the service. Then the ads only give you a discount, but they're optional. Then the ads become mandatory. And then the discount goes away because there are no alternatives without ads. Do you want constant ad bombardment? Because this is how you get constant ad bombardment.

Ads are not just ads

[themusicgod1]

In the 21st century, they are tracking devices, spying on you. The telescreens watch you through the ads. I do not consent to be watched by your panopticon, no.

Not sustainable

[93 Escort Wagon]

The more ads you shove into the face of a consumer, the less engaged with each ad that consumer becomes - and the lower your return per-advertisement goes.

Sweet remuneration

[Anonymous Coward]

2-3 hours of ad-viewing per day * 30 days = 60-90 hours per month all to receive a $10/month service. That means you'll be paid 11 to 17 cents per hour to watch ads. Who could resist that sweet remuneration?

Re:Sweet remuneration

[Excelcia]

This is meta, but has anyone else noticed odd downvotings? At the time I write this, there are about 10 "no" posts all downvoted to 0. The post I'm replying to being one of them, even though it is quite value added with a cogent and persuasive point about the benefit to time ratio.

Makes me question the moderation point generation system. I've noticed what appears to be targeted/questionable/organized downvoting on more and more posts in recent months.

Re:Sweet remuneration

[tepples]

At the time I write this, there are about 10 "no" posts all downvoted to 0.

Posts by Anonymous Coward start at zero.

Re:Hell No!

[Iwastheone]

I'm nearing 60 orbits around our Sun, have seen the "progress" of the internet over the years, back when annoying banner ads 'strobe light flashed' to get your attention. So I have learned to completely ignore any ad, thank God for adblocking software. Am I willing to have to wait while a 30/60 second ad plays before I can actually do what I intended? Of course not. Todays modern internet is invasive enough already. If I need to buy something I know how to find it, I do not need some ad telling me how happier my life will be if I buy this soda or car or whatever, but I'm old and much wiser now. The newer people are not aware of how advertising works, they are the new 'suckers' for the ad companies. God damn, we do live in an interesting time.

Re:Let me be clear

[CanadianMacFan]

I'm sensing a slight negativity towards the idea.

Here's why Netflix had success...

[MindPrison]

...it wasn't because of their astonishing content,

but rather the fact your average Joe now had a way to say goodbye to AD's forever, well - almost forever, because Netflix is in certain parts of the world re-introducing advertisement into their subscription plans.

Youtube had a similar scheme, while it DID not become the subscription boom they've hoped for, it did gather a rather substantial amount of actually faithful subscribers (we're talking Youtube premium here), and it keeps growing. Yes - you can use ad-blockers, but let's face it, that doesn't pay anyone's bills, let alone the content creators.

Personally I have both, simply as a way to opt-out of all the onslaught of senseless, mind numbing repetitive irrelevant ads. A.I will always have an opinion on what you want or need, regardless of what you really think, this makes people scramble towards AD-free solutions, even if they have to pay for it, and I'm no different in that regards, I simply HATE ads. And that's coming from a guy who used to work in advertisement.

The reason they want to offer you "free anything" is because there really is no such things in this world as a free meal, if you want something for free, you won't get that - but you can accept being a slave of the consumer audience, meaning you accept certain chores (such as having to watch an ad) in order to get something in return, so - nothing for free here. But you'll soon find yourself tired to death over it, or buying stuff you don't really need - if you're weak.

Ad free - is the future. Your time is valuable, way more valuable than any wasted time on useless products you'll never need. Every minute you waste or being distracted by things that annoy you, serves you no good at all. But it does bring other people jobs, and money, while you suffer through it all - nothing is for free.

Your choice, essentially. Vote with your money!

Re:Phones are not just phones

[DogDude]

If you have an Android phone, the one of the largest software companies on the planet is spying on you. Being concerned about smaller companies doesn't really make any sense.

Re: Phones are not just phones

[Aristos Mazer]

Of course it makes sense. Google is big enough to regulate and is subject to US law. If youâ(TM)re a US citizen, that gives some control over what it does with our data â" we could put whatever restraint we want, just as GDRP law did in Europe. The smaller companies often are not US players. Also, Google is boycot-able, and responsive to market pressures. The smaller companies are much harder to target with collective action.