Advertising, while the bane of modern existance, is also its potential saviour. Why should we have to pay for collect calls at all? To pay the salaries of underappreciated minor TV celebrities? Instead of using some collect call service, have the calls paid for by an ad. The ad could be heard by both parties, and it might be for airfare (if they're long distance) or maybe each person would hear a different local ad. then, you would get to talk for three minutes, and get to choose to hang up or hear another ad. To verify that the ad was heard, you might have to say the name of the product after the ad finished, then your call would connect.
-- simpleknight, Nov 13 2000

BT to trial advertising on calls http://web.archive....document/nr9934.htm
News release, April 27, 1999 [jutta, Nov 13 2000, last modified May 27 2010]

Dialpad. http://www.dialpad.com
Dialpad does PC->telephone calls, or PC to PC. The Java crapplet has banners, the site has banners, and the first thing you hear is an ad. [StarChaser, Nov 13 2000, last modified Oct 04 2004]

(?) Free voice calls on 3G mobile networks? http://www.carriers...68&SCID=90&TCode=NW
"Free calls may be conditional on users agreeing to receive advertisements on their handsets and allowing the operator to track their position via the phones." [egnor, Nov 13 2000, last modified Oct 04 2004]

The Onion: Google Ads in phone call http://www.theonion...eted-ads-dir,17470/
Fake news, with much panache. [jutta, May 27 2010]

This is so baked it's been forgotten again.

One of the seed set of ideas for the halfbakery was a prediction that someone would try to subsidize long-distance calls by advertisements.

Half a year later, I learn that BT did that. Some other companies did that. Later yet, at least some of the programs and some of the companies pushing them died.

On the halfbakery, everybody pretty much hated the idea. I didn't like it either, and since it had been tried (verifying my prediction) and clearly failed in practice (verifying everybody's dislike of yet more advertising), I deleted it.

Now here it is again :-)...
-- jutta, Nov 13 2000


Okay, I'm new. Too bad it didn't work out ;)
-- simpleknight, Nov 14 2000


I think the idea would work on a phone with a web browser. That way you'd see the ad when you checked the caller ID but you talk on the phone so you aren't waiting for the ad to finish. I think that this will happen anyway.
-- TwoBigFingers, Jan 30 2001


Some ideas never die. It's coming round again, this time on mobile phones; see link. Location-based targeted advertising is a new twist...
-- egnor, May 29 2001


Bad enough, I have to listen to some telemarketer. If I made someone else listen to ads just to talk to me, I might have to crawl under a rock.
-- tigerwren, Aug 08 2001


Talking of adverts, and annoyance, this page triggered my JunkBusters no-adverts-please proxy (presumably because of the URL) so all i got was a blank page!! First time this has happened to a legit page, which i reckon is not too bad, seeing as i`ve been using it for a year or so.

btw, www.junkbusters.com for the ad-remover, and www.waldherr.org for the blocklist.
-- Pallex, Aug 08 2001



random, halfbakery