Israel Startup: SellARing Delivers Ads Over Ringback Tones INTERVIEW

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
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Millennial Media Stock Opens With A Bang

Millennial Media, the largest independent mobile ad platform in the world, went public this morning on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the ticker symbol MM.  Millennial had said earlier on that they expected shares to go for between $9 and $11 at their IPO. Yesterday that number was revised to $11 to $13 per share. What happened today was nothing short of amazing.

The opening trade this morning on Millennial stock was $25 it was hovering around $26 per share around 10am eastern time this morning. It was at $25.16 at noon.

CNBC’s Jim Cramer has been talking up the mobile phone space saying that it’s the way of the future. That could be what’s driving the stock for the Baltimore based ad network.

They also have a financially sound business. Millennial did over $104 million in ad placements last year and have been on a steady trajectory of growth since being founded in 2006 by former Verizon VCast honcho Paul Palmeri.

Millennial Media’s stock story this morning has been raising some eyebrows. Yahoo advertising executive, Michael Katz, tweeted this morning:

Millennial Media’s marketcap is almost bigger than the actual Mobile Ad Maket [sic]. Tell me how this makes sense.

The Motley Fool this morning called Millennial Media “The mobile advertising play you’ve been waiting for”. Fool writer Rick Aristotle Munariz speculates that Millennial’s position as the second largest mobile ad player overall, and ahead of Apple’s mobile ad unit, may be driving the success of their IPO.

source: SAI