Earn Cellphone Minutes by Watching Ads

EARN CELLPHONE MINUTES BY WATCHING ADS
[SOURCE: New York Times, AUTHOR: Matt Richtel]
With the cost of mobile phone calls already dropping sharply, Virgin Mobile USA plans to announce a way that people can talk for no money at all. They will, however, have to pay with a chunk of their attention. The program, called SugarMama, lets people earn one minute of talking time by watching 30-second commercials on a computer or receiving text messages on their phones, then answering questions to prove they were, in fact, paying attention. Virgin Mobile, a relatively small cellphone carrier with four million mostly young customers, is aiming the program at teenagers, who can earn up to 75 minutes of free talk time a month. Howard Handler, chief marketing officer for Virgin Mobile USA, described SugarMama as "someone who shows up and gives you some extra gratification and gets you over the hump" when you are running low on talk time. The company says that the program, scheduled to be available on June 14, is the first ad-supported cellphone service in the United States. Several companies are taking a similar approach to wireless Internet access, with proposals or plans for free services backed by advertising. Virgin has signed up three advertisers: Pepsi, Microsoft's Xbox game console and a youth antismoking campaign called Truth. Telecommunications industry analysts said SugarMama might not hit a sweet spot with consumers or advertisers. Roger Entner, an analyst with Ovum Research, a market research firm, said the kinds of consumers willing to swap their time for airtime were not likely to be big spenders.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/30/business/media/30virgin.html
(requires registration)

* Virgin Mobile introduces ad-subsidized calls
http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=technologyNews&storyID=2006-05-30T094953Z_01_N28255458_RTRUKOC_0_US-TELECOMS-VIRGIN-ADVERTIS...