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"An article in Fortune today discusses plans from Jajah and Jangl, two web-based VoIP providers, to place ads into telephone calls.  A couple weeks ago we covered the funding of a company specializing in just that, Pudding Media, who has just secured $8 million to pursue the idea.\nWhile I\u2019m still not sure in-call ads are something that consumers are going to openly embrace, there were a few points from the Fortune article, as well as comments from Pudding\u2019s VP Products Eran Arbel on our original post, that may help put this new form of advertising in better perspective.\nFirst, under the systems that the VoIP services are testing, ads are only played while a call is being connected.  What type of ads might you hear?  Fortune gives the example that if you frequently place calls from Boston, you might hear ads for new flights from Logan Airport.  So, \u201Ccontextual\u201D in this case is not necessarily as invasive as \u201Cyou like to talk about football, so let\u2019s sell you Patriots tickets while you\u2019re on the call,\u201D it\u2019s more likely to be hyper-local advertising while you\u2019re waiting for the call to connect.\nNext, if you\u2019re a Jajah or Jangl user (or, another similar company), Fortune reports that the ads are opt-in, and in exchange for hearing ads, you can save on your bill.  As Arbel noted about Pudding Media, their company is actually a platform for these types of ads, so the savings go to users of the consumer-facing VoIP company, while Pudding simply provides the technology and either charges the carrier a licensing fee or shares revenue on the ads.  \nSo, what are we looking at in summary?  As Arbel wrote, \u201CWith Pudding Media, the voice provider will have flexibility in offering new calling plans which are ad-sponsored.\u201D  Considering the ads are opt-in and you need to wait for calls to connect anyhow, this new ad format might not be quite as evil as I originally thought.  Nonetheless, whether or not enough users are willing to opt-in to ads versus paying pennies per minute on VoIP will remain to be seen.\nUpdate (11:30am PST) - Michael Cerda, CEO of Jangl, has posted some thoughts about ads and VoIP calls on his blog.\n\n\n\n{democracy:65}\n\n"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2008/01/14/voip-advertising/>