Skip to main content
https://www.highperformancecpmgate.com/rgeesizw1?key=a9d7b2ab045c91688419e8e18a006621

Moolah Mobile partners with Surge to offer free mobile service with ads

Moolah Mobile is teaming up with SurgePhone Wireless to offer people a new way to pay their cell phone bills — by putting ads on their homescreens.

Moolah CEO Vernell Woods (pictured above) said the startup has already been offering gift cards and other rewards to users who view its homescreen ads. So this is a similar model, except instead of leading to gift cards, the ads are subsidizing cell phone service from Surge.

The ads show up on users’ homescreen during all those interstitial moments between using apps, so the goal is to offer free service without consumers having to change their behavior. Woods said all that ad time adds up, with “the average person who’s using their phone on a consistent basis” viewing “easily between two to three hours” of home screen ads each day. And that’s enough to pay for the “equivalent” of Surge’s $10 monthly plan.

On the other hand, if for some reason a subscriber isn’t hitting the necessary total, Woods said they can also earn more points by accepting offers or taking surveys.

Moolah isn’t the only company using advertising to make previously paid products free. Just last week, I wrote about PreShow, a startup promising a free movie ticket for watching 15 to 20 minutes of ads. (Not everyone was crazy about the idea.)

Moolah Mobile screenshot

Moolah Mobile screenshot

But Woods said he’s doing this because he wants to make wireless service more affordable to people in low-income communities. In the announcement, Moolah investor Tip “T.I.” Harris said it’s “one of the few tech companies I’ve seen who truly want to help everyday people have access to technology.”

But could this also be seen as a way to harvest personal data from a vulnerable population? Woods said he wants to protect against that with a blockchain initiative set to launch this fall, allowing users to see exactly what data is being shared with advertisers.

“No personal information should be going to advertisers without users knowing about it,” he said, adding that companies “definitely should not be making money off” personal data without giving users a cut of the profits.

The subsidized wireless service should be available on Surge Volt Android devices with Moolah install kits, as well as on SIM Starter Kits distributed by Surge. Moolah and Surge said they will roll this out Florida, Virginia, Georgia and Texas initially, with an aim of reaching 40,000 locations by the end of the year.

MoviePass co-founder’s new startup PreShow gives you free movie tickets for watching ads

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Uber co-founder Garrett Camp steps back from board director role

Uber co-founder Garrett Camp is relinquishing his role as a board director and switching to board observer — where he says he’ll focus on product strategy for the ride hailing giant. Camp made the announcement in a short Medium post in which he writes of his decade at Uber: “I’ve learned a lot, and realized that I’m most helpful when focused on product strategy & design, and this is where I’d like to focus going forward.” “I will continue to work with Dara [Khosrowshahi, Uber CEO] and the product and technology leadership teams to brainstorm new ideas, iterate on plans and designs, and continue to innovate at scale,” he adds. “We have a strong and diverse team in place, and I’m confident everyone will navigate well during these turbulent times.” The Canadian billionaire entrepreneur signs off by saying he’s looking forward to helping Uber “brainstorm the next big idea”. Camp hasn’t been short of ideas over his career in tech. He’s the co-founder of the web 2.0 recommendatio...
Post a Comment
Read more

Leading VCs discuss how COVID-19 has impacted the world of digital health

In December 2019, Extra Crunch spoke to a group of investors leading the charge in health tech to discuss where they saw the most opportunity in the space leading into 2020 . At the time, respondents highlighted startups in digital therapeutics, telehealth and mental health that were improving medical practitioner efficiency or streamlining the distribution of care, amongst a variety of other digital health markets that were garnering the most attention. Where top VCs are investing in digital health In the months since, the COVID-19 crisis has debilitated national healthcare systems and the global economy. Weaknesses in healthcare systems have become clearer than ever, while startups and capital providers have struggled to operate while wide swaths of the market effectively shut down. Given significant volatility and the rapid changes seen in the worlds of healthcare, venture and startups broadly, we wanted to understand which inefficiencies might have been brought to light, w...
Post a Comment
Read more

News-reading app Flipboard expands local coverage, including coronavirus updates, to 12 more U.S. metros

Earlier this year, personalized news aggregation app Flipboard expanded into local news . The feature brought local news, sports, real estate, weather, transportation news and more to 23 cities across the U.S. Today, Flipboard is bringing local news to 12 more U.S. metros and is adding critical coronavirus local coverage to all of the 35 supported locales. The 12 new metros include the following:  Baltimore, Charlotte, Cleveland, Detroit, Indianapolis, Nashville, Pittsburgh, Orlando, Raleigh, Salt Lake City, St. Louis, and Tampa Bay. They join the 23 cities that were already supported:  Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Minneapolis-St. Paul, New Orleans, New York City, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Portland, Sacramento, San Diego, San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle, Toronto, Vancouver and Washington, D.C. To offer local news in its app, Flipboard works with area partners, big and small, like The Plain Dealer’s Cleveland.com , ...
Post a Comment
Read more