Friday, January 25, 2008

Jan Michael Hess is reengineering Blyk’s Business Model

My friend Jan Michael Hess, CEO of the Berlin-based management consultancy Mobile Economy GmbH, has just published an interesting whitepaper "How to build a profitable ad-funded M(V)NO and maximise Ad ARPU". Since he is an expert in mobile advertising and MVNOs, he decided to reengineer Blyk’s business model, share his findings and develop a number of strategy recommendations that might be valuable to Blyk as well as future ad-funded MVNOs and MNOs.
I believe that it is possible to build a profitable ad-funded MVNO. It is also possible for MNOs themselves to introduce ad-funded voice and data tariffs. You don’t necessarily need to build a new MVNO brand like Blyk to maximise Ad ARPU.

Since the actual values in Blyk’s business plan and the wholesale prices negotiated with the Host MNO Orange in the UK are secret, Hess uses his own assumptions for the parameters driving revenues, costs and profit in the whitepaper's calculation. The outcome is a very educated guess work which probably hits the spot and helps to understand the ad based MVNO business model.

2 comments:

  1. the key issue with most ad support phone models is that they are in fact data mining operations that ask for too much personal information on the users. i know a lot of people who will happily accept advertisement in audio, video or text form in exchange for free phone calls. these same people will not fill out surveys or take part in various promotional offers etc. in exchange for the same.

    ideally an ad based phone service should be completely anonymous as to make people more comfortable. after all we view ads in magazines, newspaper on TV and on the internet in an anonymous capacity. why should phone ads be any different.

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  2. Very good points! Too sad that you are just an anonymous poster. But I guess I have to respect your privacy. ;)

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