SugarMama: The new way to earn Free Airtime in your Spare Time

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The cell phone industry in the United States is currently a strong $118 billion market with the number of subscribers closing in on 225 million which is staggering considering that the population of the United States is around 320 million.  The competition is fierce among the cell phone providers with Google CEO Eric Schmidt predicting that we would soon see free cell phones with the carrier cost entirely subsidized by ads.

According to Business 2.0, Google has already been testing such services in more than 10 countries including Germany and Japan.  According to Deep Nishar, Google’s director of product management, ” The cell phone is becomming more of a utility device. This means consumers will be more focused on services”

Among the major players providing such a free cell phone service is Virgin Mobile’s SugarMama. SugarMama’s motto: Give us a minute of your time, get a minute of airtime. Virgin Mobile’s existing customers can sign up for SugarMama through Virgin Mobile’s website by filling out a short demographic profile and certifying that they are 13 years and older. That’s the deal and you have three ways to earn with your SugarMama. You can watch short online video commercials on a computer and give them your feedback . You can also earn airtime by opting in to SMS messages with advertisements, discounts and other promotions and answer questions via text message and finally through surveys about brands, products and services.

According to Dan Schulman, Chief Executive Officer at Virgin Mobile USA,

“This is truly a win-win situation for everyone involved.Through this multi-faceted service, Virgin Mobile customers will earn free minutes as well as exclusive access to unique content and offers. Our partner brands will be able to enrich the lives of Virgin Mobile users while customizing how they engage with our base — all while adding a smart and targeted mobile channel to their media mix.”

So, How many minutes can you earn though this SugarMama service. According to Virgin, it all depends on you, how much you want to get involved. The more services you sign up for, the more you earn. Fine print: Upto 75 minutes each month. However, this new creative method of targetting the youth market has caught on with a number of powerful companies willing to advertise which include Microsoft’s Xbox, Pepsi and a youth antismoking campaign called Truth.

Upsides:

1. According to Virgin, the video ads are around 30-40 seconds long and the survey question about the ad should not take you more than 15-20 seconds. So all in all, it takes about a minute for you to complete a video survey.

2. Tapping the lucrative Mobile phone advertising: The service provides a new innovate way for advertisers to get in touch with a market they absolutely love and extremely desirable. This initiative along with Virgin’s penny texting, has gained it almost 4.6 million customers towards the end of 2006, giving advertisers an extremely lucrative and large base.

3. Out of money and desperately need free minutes. Virgin’s customers can sign up for this service and earn some bonus free cell phone minutes.

4. Recent partnership with JumpTap. In an announcement late last year, Virgin Mobile partnered with JumpTap allowing targeted advertising via search.

Downsides:

1. You have a monthly cap of 75 minutes, which is not a whole lot. While poor college and school kids might love this, one must be really hard pressed to sign up for a service which makes you watch ads and respond to them via text messages and just earn a measly amount of talktime. According to a Virgin statistic, on average, a subscriber earns about 9.89 minutes of airtime per cycle.

2. When you respond to their video ads and text messages, only correct answers earn the customer free minutes of airtime. An example could be to identify the main point of a commercial.

3. Airtime keeps getting cheaper and cheaper. So will Virgin hit a sweetspot? According to Roger Entner, an analyst with Ovum Research, a market research firm

” If you’re too cheap to buy a minute of air time, how are you going to afford an Xbox?” Mr. Entner said. The people likely to earn minutes for free “are people who want to avoid costs at any cost.”

Competition and similar services:

A JupiterResearch study found that in the 18-to-24 age range (the youngest demographic polled), only 9% said they would consider receiving ads if it meant free minutes. In a separate line of questioning, 42% of 18- to 24-year-olds said they would not want to receive advertisements on their phones under any circumstances whatsoever.

But that’s not keeping the mobile-ad space from heating up. Last October, advertising giant Omnicom got into the business by acquiring Ipsh, a mobile advertising agency. Recent reports say Microsoft is in talks to buy Third Screen Media, another startup that serves up ads to mobile phones.

According to Virgin’s spokeswoman Jayne Wallace, SugarMama has been used more than 2 million times and gaining almost a 1000 new users a day and closing in on 150,000 subscribers for this service since its launch in May 2006. The service also seems to have attracted new advertisers which include Sony Pictures and U.S. Navy. Based on this, Virgin’s innovative scheme seems to gaining popularity. So, keep an eye out for more carriers to offer you “free” cell phone service in the very near future. As for SugarMama, if you are a Virgin Customer, you should definitely sigh up for this, since it might get you over the hump when you are running low on airtime.

About Virgin Mobile USA, LLC

Launched nationally in July of 2002, Virgin Mobile USA, LLC is the nation’s first wireless network created for and defined by youth. Virgin Mobile is a joint venture between Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Group and Sprint Nextel, which operates one of the largest 100-percent digital, nationwide PCS wireless networks in the United States. The country’s first mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), Virgin Mobile’s four million customers have access to a service portfolio that includes multiple voice pricing options, a full range of handsets and a broad array of messaging, music and mobile content offerings — without long-term contracts. In addition, J.D. Power and Associates has recognized Virgin Mobile for providing “An Outstanding Customer Service Experience” under its Certified Call Center Program.(SM) — Source

Virgin’s Press Release on the launch of SugarMama service

    “Customers will be invited to watch a streaming video advertisement, after which they’ll spend a few seconds answering questions to show they watched the segment and understood key takeaways. Correct answers earn the customer free minutes of airtime.

    Customers can also earn airtime by opting-in to SMS messages that contain advertisements or discounts. Virgin Mobile expects to continue to expand the scope of this program, offering advertisers the opportunity to showcase long-form or other unique types of content”

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