How Long Till We Have a Fully Connected World?

An article on today’s NYT describes AnchorFree’s new business plan: Wi-fi paid by advertisers not users.

The service will be available to businesses of any size. A person can go into a nearby restaurant and use their wi-fi at no cost as long as they watch an ad. Everyone seems to win.

I think this sounds exciting. The more places you can find wi-fi the more convenient. After all I’m a person who would love to be connected at all times.

If people are willing to pay for this convenience I am sure they would be willing to watch an ad for it. As an advertiser I would probably have to think about it twice. Do I believe the business plan will work? I do, to some extent.

As much as the company states this service is for businesses of all sizes we know this isn’t true. The only business that will be able to have service on their location are business that either have very specific customers and therefore allows for very targeted advertising and business that attract a large number of customers.

I agree with Mark Smith’s, executive vice president for marketing and strategy at AnchorFree, belief that the Wi-fi network is an untapped market. Everyone seems to want to be connected at all time and a growing number of people have devices that could take advantage of the extra hot-spots.

Yes the ads would probably be annoying, but after a while you can learn to tune them out even though they are a “persistent messaging frame” on your webpage.

The success of the business plan depends on whether advertisers believe in the effectiveness of these ads. I don’t think they will be effective, but I do think that advertisers are usually more hopeful that I am.