“We’re interested in allowing advertisers to open up a new medium for messages,” said Eran Arbel, VP of products for Pudding Media/San Jose, Calif., the company that’s playing ads to people making VoIP calls based on keywords heard in their conversations.
The company launched its ad service on Sept. 24 and is thus far playing only text ads, but it seeks to play other formats in the future. “We’re looking at creating our own inventory that includes banners and video,” Arbel said. “It’s more challenging to deliver video, depending on the speed of the network.”
The company is working with ad networks Arbel declined to identify and has begun playing ads for advertisers he can’t name because they are customers of the networks. “Ads are now playing for buying a car in your neighborhood, you’ll see an ad for a dealer, or for movies, you’ll get an ad for an online ticket buying service,” he said.
The company plays ads based on technology it developed to “recognize a subset of keywords to map into relevant ads,” he said. “We don’t understand things related to health, because it’s a private matter. We lean to sports, movies, entertainment, cars and education.”
Once a keyword is mentioned, the company plays ads in addition to non-sponsored content. For instance if the keyword is movie related, the user will get movie interviews and gossip along with an ad for a ticket buying service.
If the user is making the call on a computer, the content plays on the screen while the call is being made. If the caller is using a mobile phone the content will play on the mobile screen after the call is completed, Arbel said.
Users can go to the Thepudding.com to make free VoIP calls, but the company is providing the free phone service to demonstrate its new ad technology. “It’s not our business model and we don’t want to compete,” he said. “Our goal is to provide communication providers with the technology.”
He said, “There’s a wide gamut of providers from mobile operators like Sprint to Skype and other web-enabled voice services who are having difficulty generating revenue from VoIP. Many companies are offering free services, but can’t monetize it. The technology we developed generates revenue by providing users with relevant ads. We’ve taken the Google AdSense model and applied it to communication services.”
There have been a number of criticisms of the company’s model as an invasion of privacy, with many upset that the company is listening to private calls. But Arbel said, “We don’t know who they are, we don’t ask for private information and we don’t store the keywords they’ve said. We take a look at the ads and match them, and after we display them we forget everything and don’t provide any information to the advertiser.”
He said, “Many people are afraid of what they shouldn’t be, it’s all about perception.”
Supreme Court Allows Multibillion-Dollar Class Action Lawsuit To Proceed Against Meta
The Supreme Court is allowing a multibillion-dollar class action investors' lawsuit to proceed against Facebook parent Meta, stemming from the privacy scandal involving the Cambridge Analytica political consulting firm.
The justices heard arguments in November in Meta's bid to shut down the lawsuit. On Friday, they decided that they were wrong to take up the case in the first place.
The high court dismissed the company's appeal, leaving in place an appellate ruling allowing the case to go forward.
Investors allege that Meta did not fully disclose the risks that Facebook users' personal information would be misused by Cambridge Analytica, a firm that supported Donald Trump 's first successful Republican presidential campaign in 2016.
Inadequacy of the disclosures led to two significant price drops in the price of the company's shares in 2018, after the public learned about the extent of the privacy scandal, the investors say.
Meta spokesman Andy Stone said the company was disappointed by the court's action. "The plaintiff's claims are baseless and we will continue to defend ourselves as this case is considered by the District Court," Stone said in an emailed statement.
Meta already has paid a $5.1 billion fine and reached a $725 million privacy settlement with users.
Cambridge Analytica had ties to Trump political strategist Steve Bannon. It had paid a Facebook app developer for access to the personal information of about 87 million Facebook users. That data was then used to target U.S. voters during the 2016 campaign.
The lawsuit is one of two high court cases involving class-action lawsuits against tech companies. The justices also are wrestling with whether to shut down a class action against Nvidia.... Read More