2. The Problem: Waiting Time!
How many times did you wait
for a friend to answer your call?
How many times have you
waited for customer service to
pickup the phone?
How long did you endure
listening to music you hate or
meaningless recorded
messages while waiting?
“Please hold..Your call is very
important to us”!
3. The Solution: Avoice..
A service that allows users to choose what to hear
while waiting:
New music albums of favorite singers
Suggestions of nearby attractions, restaurants,
movies
Exclusive offers and deals
The service is provided through a mobile app
(installed on the user’s phone)
• with a complementing value-added service (through
telecommunications company)
4. Value for the User
The service is offered for free to the user.
The user can customize his/her waiting time
Customizable preferences
which types of ads to listen to, at which times etc.
Intelligent ad selections
taking current location, time, called number into account
Exclusive offers and deals
5. Value for the Advertiser
• Untapped advertising channel
• Highly customizable and targeted
• Ads is customized to individual users (unlike TV & radio)
• Highly effective
• User hear the ads without distraction from the content
(unlike the web where most ads go unnoticed).
• Highly competitive pricing
• Aside from app development cost, and marketing, there is
no recurring content cost (unlike TV and Radio)
6. Avoice in real life (1)
ou call your wife while driving from work to decide
where to go on Friday night. While waiting, Avoice
tells you about an amazing exclusive offer at your
favourite French restaurant. Your wife answers
the phone and you suggest the restaurant. She
commends the choice. Upon finishing your call,
you say “avoice”. The phone automatically calls
the restaurant and you make the reservation.
7. Avoice in real-life (2)
ou call the customer service of your 5 year old car
to schedule car service. While waiting for
someone to answer the call, Avoice tells you
about an exclusive test drive of your next car
model only this weekend. You decide to give it a
try. After the customer service call, you open
Avoice app for more details about the offer.
8. Revenue
Primary revenue will be generated from
advertisers
Potential advertisers include movie distributers,
restaurants, CD distributers, etc.
Two alternative models:
Pay per click: every time user clicks a provided URL
Pay per play: every time an ad plays (cheaper)
Secondary sources of income include
Premium services for users
Commission from partner referrals (audio studios)
9. Preliminary Market Analysis
• We conducted preliminary face-to-face survey
with 12 users where we discussed the main
idea of avoice
• This resulted in revising our business model in
a number of ways, including
• Focus on movies, songs, and offers
Initially we considered general ads (e.g. cokecola)
• Ads not to introduce any delay in calls
Initially we considered offering free minutes if users accept
hearing an ad before placing a call
10. Technical Analysis
• Avoice service is provided as
mobile app. Android will be our
first platform due to its market
share, growth, and open source
availability
• Current Andoid technology supports
monitoring outgoing phone calls
• Complementary service is Android Growth
provided through ring-back-tones,
via profit sharing with telecom
companies (confirmed through our
contact with du, one of the main
service providers in UAE).
11. Market Segment
• Source: International 6 billion Mobile devices
Telecommunication
Union (November 2 billion Smartphones
2011) and
mobithinking.com
(May 2012) 1.2 billion Android phones
• The computation of 0.6 billion Android
the dollar market with Internet
value was done
using the survey Our market share
(explained later) $25
million/day
12. In-depth Market Analysis
• We conducted more detailed on-line surveys
from 43 users to test our main assumptions.
• We focus here on the two most important
hypotheses:
• Demand
How many people would be interested in such service
• Market Segment
How big is our revenue from advertising, given the limited
window of waiting time
13. Hypothesis 1: Demand
• Of the 43 survey participants,
only 15 (about 34%) indicated
that they will not be interested
in hearing anything other than
the beep.
• Of the 0.6 billion Android users
with Internet access, our potential
market is 0.64 * 0.6 =
0.4 billion users
• The highest demand was for
local events and weekend
activities
• Avoice is particularly suited for
geomarketing
14. Hypothesis 2: Market segment
• The market segment depends on the
percentage of calls that the person waits long
enough for an ad to be played.
• In the survey, we collected:
• how many missed calls a person gets
• how long a person is willing to wait for an answer.
• Combining both questions, reflects the average
waiting time.
15. Hypothesis 2: Market segment
(cont.)
• On average a person makes/receives
8 mobile calls per day.
• More than 80% of callers wait for 3
beeps or more (enough for at least
one ad).
• Combining both statistics, a person
can hear > 8 * 0.8 = 6.4 voice ad per
day.
• With 0.4 potential users (slide 13),
there is potentially 0.4*6.4= 2.5 billion
ads to be played per day.
• With only 1 cents an ad, the potential
revenue is 25 million dollars a day.
16. Conclusion
• Avoice is a service that allows a mobile caller to
control what to hear while waiting for an answer
• Unlike TV and Radio, Avoice ads are
customized, targeted, and cheap
• Unlike the web, Avoice ads are highly effective
• The potential market share is $25 million per
day
