

Ask HN: I'm starting a service to send solicited ads via sms. Your thoughts? - wairagu

Hi, I' m in Kenya . I want to start a
service where ;
 Users who would
like to to receive sms ads can sign up.
Users in turn receive mobile phone
credit per sms ad that they
receive .<p>Advertisers can then use
my service (from the website) to target
users with relevant ads . I 'll then send
this ads to the relevant users via
sms.  I' ll charge advertisers a
constant service charge , profit margin
plus cost per sms ad
sent.<p>Questions 
1. As an advertiser
what things would you like to know
about users in order to determine
which users to send which ads to? eg
age , marital status, gender etc&#60;/p &#62;<p>2. As
a user would you be willing to join
such a service . If yes, on what
conditions &#60; p&#62;<p>3 .Any other advice, in
biz or your thoughts are
welcome .&#60;/p &#62;<p>anything ,
======
bediger
Please, I beg of you, in the name of all that does not suck, DO NOT MAKE THIS
SERVICE!

It will be abused, people will spam, and others will be annoyed by the spam,
and have to pay for the spam.

You have no economic incentive to take people off send-me-ads-lists. You will
make money by the SMS, probably, or at least you'll charge incrementally, 100
some price, 1000 some more price, etc etc. It will be against your better
monetary interest to accept "remove" requests, so you won't put any effort
into the interface, you won't fix bugs, and you'll ignore any inquiry that
isn't exactly correct, with well-formed sentences. You will make it easy to
get a phone number ON the lists, since that is how you make money.

This is a recipe for disaster for the victims of your proposed service, and a
moral disaster for your, as you will find yourself compromising your moral and
ethical standards along the way. You will find yourself a near-criminal,
universally loathed spammer within 2 years.

~~~
wairagu
I hear you, but we will set standards that will be adhered to by employees who
may be in a position to see a users phone number. Just like your ISP that has
your email, but does it send you spam just because it has it? Google has my
phone number, but they don't send me spam. because they have policies against
those kind of things, that's what we aim to put in place. Maybe hard but we
will.

Just to reiterate, phoned numbers will be in our database, advertisers skill
not get their hands on this db.

------
breckinloggins
Answer to number 1: Standard demographic information, sure, but also what kind
of phone they have. This would make it easier to push advertisements for apps

Answer to number 2: No, because I think the age of "interruptive" marketing is
over. However, if I could get a free phone and some kind of basic service plan
and I was low on funds, I would absolutely do it.

Answer to number 3: You're in Kenya... the advice you get from people in other
countries may or may not apply, so take everything with a grain of salt
(including what I'm saying). Also, I think your business will be made or
broken by the agreements you can make with carriers.

~~~
wairagu
Here in Kenya most phone users (about 95%) are on a pre pay plan, ie you pay
first then the money you have paid decrements as you talk. 1US dollar will
give you about 15 minutes of talk time.

What we want to do is give users about 2minutes of free talk time for every ad
they get from us.

------
mgl
Don't you think that the engagement factor for subscribed ads can be really,
really low? Did you talk to potential advertisers or ad networks about this
idea? Are they willing to spend their money on promoting their ads via this
channel?

My concern is that without putting ads in any context (like embedding in
conversation) people will just ignore them, completely. Also, any advertiser
would like to know much more about users to target ads more precisely, a set
of interests should be just a starting point.

~~~
wairagu
Haven't talked to potential advertisers yet.

I hear you on the fact that users may ignore ads if they are not in any
context. So I was thinking that maybe I can implement a mechanism where users
have to reply back with something that was embedded in the ad to prove that
they have read it.

