Jajah introduces ad-supported free calls in Europe

Jajah have announced that they are now offering free calls within some European countries via an agreement with several large European media conglomerates.

Now, if you are anything like me, you will not really be keen on the idea of ad-supported calls. Don’t freak out just yet, the ads are on the page and not included before the call connects. You can see example of the new ad-supported call plan here, here and here.

I would be slightly concerned that banner ads would perform well enough to cover or generate any revenue. Banner ads have been hit very hard by contextual advertising and banner blindness. So they must be getting paid on a per impression basis, which means they are going to require an awful lot of traffic as most banners pay out very little. Erick Schonfeld goes into more depth on this.

At least they are trying to get new users. I would be skeptical if any new Jajah users born out of this ad-supported call scheme will actually convert into paying customers though. Personally I would bet that a lot of the users will be credit card-less, PayPal-less youths looking for a cheap way to stay in touch.