Kyle
While some may shrug at the thought of another ad network, an Israeli startup has created a way of advertising that some may find less obtrusive than push ads in notification bars and even banner ads on their favorite free apps. Sellaring utilizes the time that you’re waiting for another party to answer the phone to deliver up to a 10 second ad.
Now before you write it off, think about it for a second, that time you’re waiting for your party to answer the phone you can’t do anything else on your phone. If you do you’re multitasking and the ad would be reduced to background noise anyway so it’s really a better place to deliver an advertising message. There are over 300 advertisers who definitely think this is a good idea.
When you put SellAring next to other alternative forms of advertising you may not think it’s such a bad idea. SellAring also features a call to action at the end of the call so if you hear about a great deal in the ad while you’re waiting for your other party to answer, you can quickly act on that ad, or choose to ignore it. The choice is yours.
SellARing’s founder found out some interesting things about the ringback tone experience before creating SellARing. First off he found that the actual time the phone rings on the callers end isn’t an actual reflection of how long it takes for the other person to answer. You can actually test this theory at home by calling yourself from another phone. You’ll notice that in some cases even 5 seconds is wasted before the call initiates, even if the caller is available to answer on the first ring.
More after the break
The other thing he discovered was that 30 hours a year was being wasted listening to ring back tones. Sure there are those people that have cool music as ring back tones but that was a concept that was hot in the mid part of the last decade but falling off and we’re back to listening to the ring ring ring.
SellARing’s SDK offers alternatives to app developers rather then putting typical ad units on top of their games and apps. This gives the developer even more real estate to work with in app.
We got a chance to talk with SellARing here’s what they told us:
What is Sellaring
SellAring is an audio-based ad network for smartphones. Using patent-pending technology, sellAring replaces the Ring Back Tone with audio ads. Ring back tone is the “ring-ring” you hear while you wait for your phone call to be answered. SellAring utilizes this unused duration of time to deliver an audio ad up to 10 seconds long. This kind of mobile advertising is also known as “Ring-Back Advertising”.
SellAring also delivers a powerful Post-Call Action Menu which appears after the call is completed and enables the user to receive information from the advertiser via SMS, Email or a phone call. View examples here: http://www.sellaring.com/advertisers
This Call-to-Action Menu can either complement the audio ad or be used as a stand-alone advertising method.
For app developers relying on ad revenues, the SellAring SDK, when embedded in their free app, provides an effective monetization vehicle. Simply by hearing an occasional sellAring audio ad before a call, the user enjoys the app for free — without the interference of banner ads. For advertisers, it’s untapped real estate, delivering targeted ads with enhanced user engagement.
Who are the founders and what are their backgrounds?
Zohar Halachmi is sellAring’s inventor and founder. Before founding sellAring, he served as VP global sales of ECI telecom. Prior, he served as VP Asia at Amdocs. He founded Thetis Technologies and was the first to offer SaaS solutions (Software As A Service) to enterprise. Zohar also lectures at the Technion – Israel institute of Technology and at Tel Aviv University.
What’s been the market reception to the concept?
Ring back ads are a fairly new concept, however, market adoption has been rapid. The facts that we monetize the entire installed base of any app and deliver a high eCPM (above $5, higher than industry standard) have contributed greatly to our growth. Additionally, advertisers are showing much interest in the concept of audio ads which is often familiar from radio advertising.
Over 300 Advertisers
SellAring released it’s first public beta offering on Jan/2012.
Israel
The first challenge was technical, we had to build a service that would bypass the operator network. Today, SellAring’s service is fully device based.
The second challenge involved market adoption, we faced the chicken and the egg problem in terms of bringing in advertisers and app developers to our network. Since everything moved quite rapidly since our growth we were able to overcome this issue.
We’re continuing to stride forward. The past few months have convinced us that ring back advertising and our post-call action menu of engagement has plenty to offer the mobile ad industry. App developers everywhere seek for more powerful and effective monetization methods and we’re eager to bring forth our solutions.
