Ad supported telephony as a concept is not proven yet. But it is the new rage nonetheless. I think it is possible to build sustainable business model just because there are lots of talented people out there working hard to prove the concept. I am a strong believer in creating demand for a product where it may not exist.
One of the tools that could help drive ad supported telephony is a speech-to-text engine that converts the audio contents of a phone conversation into text in realtime, scans that text, picks keywords from the conversation, and requests an appropriate Google ad to be streamed over the phone client (let us say over a VoIP client).
I am impressed by how some of the sites like LinkedIn are able to frequently serve me with text ads that are so appropriate to my profile. I feel tempted to click. There must be very close integration between the information in your LinkedIn profile and the Google ad server. That is the kind of tight integration we require to make ad supported telephony a success.
So the idea being floated is something like a SpinVox speech technology + Google-API. The resultant app could be licensed to those telephony service providers who are looking to explore ad supported telephony. It could be integrated into the VoIP client a service provider is offering. So not only does the service provider have a tool that streams Google ads to its client, the provider also has a tool that is highly accurate and relevant in terms of the ads it should stream to the users.
Another possible business model is to simultaneously develop two apps: (1) the one I have just described above i.e. speech-to-text engine that interfaces with Google ad server, and (2) a Skype / SkypeOut application that simply ports over Skype capability to some web site but includes, in addition, the streaming of Google ads. You could then share the ad revenues with Skype. But the margins will be microscopic on SkypeOut calls.
Comments (2)
Pudding Media presented such a solution yet months ago and produced a big outcry.
Posted by Markus Goebel | April 20, 2008 9:53 AM
Posted on April 20, 2008 09:53
Advertising and Voice seem to be a perfect match - especially with the huge growth and take up of VOIP and the issues around creating revenue from this techology. The desire to prove a concept is real. However - there are some real stumbling blocks to this gaining traction. Call centres are able to record your calls and then search the content for FSA regs for example - people expect this for training purposes etc. I am not sure if anyone would want there private (or business calls) recorded - especially if the outcome is to stream you an advert - customised or not. The telephone is tradtionally a private communication mechanism (there are exceptions like teleconferencing etc) There would also be all kinds of data protection issues around this which would vary from country to country. Then we have the technology - realtime voice conversion is a hugely complex and difficult problem to crack - it will be here soon! But not yet. Imagine if you say 'pope' in a call and the system converts it as 'poke' - the adverts you get bombarded with may not be what you expected!!
Like all good ideas, if the motivation is there and strong enough - and gaining revenue from VOIP services is one of those, then someone will crack it - - a solution that allows personalised advertising from your daily interactions outside of the traditional Internet activity - Voice or not is being looked at by people far cleverer than me - it will be fascinating to see what comes along!
Posted by Michael Wheeler-Wyatt (Sales Director SpinVox) | April 24, 2008 5:57 PM
Posted on April 24, 2008 17:57