Advertising-based calling plan

As we continue down the beta road, we are contemplating an advertising-based model that would allow us to continue to provide the RingBranch service for free.  Our plan is to offer a free ad-supported service and a service that has no ads but charges $5 to $20 per month, depending on the number of minutes used. 

In-call advertising is a rather new advertising medium.  You may have heard an In-Call ad if you called a service like Free411. ( You can listen to this sample ad from Free411 to hear an example of In-Call advertising).   

We are still sorting through things like the number of ads that would be played and when they would be played.  We obviously want to make this as non-intrusive to our users as possible and we will focus on this  At the same time, we have to be able to make enough money on the advertising to pay for connecting your phone call.  If you make a call to a friend and talk for 10 minutes, we, on average, would incur telecom costs of around $.20, assuming we have to connect through the PSTN.   So, during the course of that call, we have to figure out a way to make, on average, more than $.20.  Otherwise, we give you free long distance calling and we lose money!

We would like to hear your opinion on In-Call advertising.  Would you agree to listen to short audio ads in return for a free long distance service?  What if we could offer free international calling?  Please send us your thoughts.

Comments

[Corey]

Personally, I would not utilize the free advertisement service but instead would pay for this service (if between $5 to $10) each month. I use my phone for my personal life and my business contacts as well and would not feel comfortable speaking on a business call with the possibility that an advertisement will play at any random time. I would be even more inclined to pay for this service (at an even higher fee) if it were able to utilize text messages and picture mails through the one centralized number. At the moment it just seems to be able to only handle voice calls.

[Corey]

Personally, I would not utilize the free advertisement service but instead would pay for this service (if between $5 to $10) each month. I use my phone for my personal life and my business contacts as well and would not feel comfortable speaking on a business call with the possibility that an advertisement will play at any random time. I would be even more inclined to pay for this service (at an even higher fee) if it were able to utilize text messages and picture mails through the one centralized number. At the moment it just seems to be able to only handle voice calls.

[spg]

i would be quite willing to listen to an ad in order to make free outbound calls. i would absolutely not be willing to subject the person on the other end of the line to any ads whether on incoming calls or an other time. i am also not willing to sign up for 'special offer', surveys or any other of similar deals that are often marketed as ad based telephony. but a simple 10 or 15 sec ad that i personally listen to before my outbound calls is connected would be fine.