Ad-Supported Bluetooth Content In Sth Africa

Students on five university campuses in South Africa can receive free made-for-mobile TV shows, music and movie trailers to their mobile phones over Bluetooth, reports BusinessDay. The bluetooth zones are mostly in cafeterias, and students with Bluetooth-enabled phones get pinged every 20 minutes asking if they want to download more content (which is pretty much Bluespamming, especially if there is no opt-out method). The company behind the scheme is Motherland Isiko TV (MiTV), which has signed deals to send out movie trailers from Ster Kinekor and ringtones, screen savers and games from Exact Mobile…MiTV is struggling to profit from the venture because the content is free. If the downloads become blatant advertising, the students will stop accepting them and the sponsors will withdraw their support.”

From the tone of the article it appears that the ads are sent seperate to content instead of being integrated into the content (eg, as a pre-roll clip) which doesn’t strike me as a good move. It’s got a potential audience of 90,000 but has so far delivered downloads to about 1000 people — it’s targeting 2000 downloads per campus per month.

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