Advertising agency Perceptive Impression  has bought 75% of PromoTel, which holds two pending patents filed by Karl Seelig et al. on wireless ring back technology dated from the year 2001. According to the press release, one patent is for ringback music and the other is for ringback advertising…“PromoTel fully intends on maximizing its patent strength, upon patent issuance and dominating this new advertising platform.”
An asian company has already announced plans to do this (and that it has patented the technology), and I raised the issue in an article on mobile advertising last year. The crux of the matter is how the system is implemented. If telcos arbritarily slap on the ads no-one is going to like it, and those people currently deploring yet another intrusion of ads into our life will be right. If there is a benefit to the owner of the phone number (that doesn’t include, for example, not answering the phone for 30 seconds) they might find an audience…it raises the question of who owns the ringing noise? Since telcos offer a ringback tone service it indicates that they accept people have the right to choose what other people calling them hear.
So far Perceptive Impressions and PromoTel have not indicated how they plan to commercialize this…(via Ringtonia)
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