NIC HARALAMBOUS

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Pay to watch advertising - can it work?

I've seen a lot of different advertising platforms, companies and businesses come and go. I've interacted with many having worked at various media houses in SA as well as at a major mobile network. Everyone is trying to solve a problem in advertising. Advertising makes the world go round whether we like to admit it or not.It's quite well known that people are becoming blind to advertising. This is a problem for anyone with a brand trying reach an audience.SeeSayDo.mobi is a company trying to combat ad-blindness by incentivising consumers to visit their mobile site and watch advertising. In exchange for a consumers attention, SeeSayDo will pay out airtime, cash or data.The service talks about DSTV as their major partner right now amongst "others". I think there's legs for something like this to really work if the advertising being showcased is sufficiently engaging to keep the consumers coming back. Ultimately we'd all like to think that people will do anything for money but the truth is, it has to be time well spent and money well earned.The service is definitely trying to keep you on your mobile phone. The desktop website explicitly tells you that the best viewing is done on a mobile device.Registration was simple enough and I had no problem kicking off into the advertising categories. The first advert I listened to was a Mini (the car) advert and was an audio ad. The quality of the audio was listenable but not fantastic. I imagine they're doing this to keep data costs down, which I appreciate.I am curies about the value in spending data to listen to ads in comparison to the amount of money I would be paid out to listen to those ads.This isn't a new concept when you look at the global market but all in all it's a well executed platform that seems to do what it promises: Pay you to watch adverts.Your attention is a valuable commodity, don't forget that. SeeSayDo.mobi knows this and has created a smart model to gain your attention. Bare in mind: If you're not paying, you're the product.View their TV ad above. And no, you wont get paid for watching it.*This is a sponsored post