Listening to a 90-second ad entitles users to 3 minutes of free local phone service. The service has been well received since its establishment last June. The Shanghai Telephone Office recently reported a record of 70,000 people dialing 801 phone in a single day. Listening to telephone ads is a convenient way for Shanghai residents to save a lot of money. By listening to 15 minutes of phone ads, Shanghai residents can receive one half hour of free phone service.
Advertisers pay for the free phone service incentive.
The new telephone advertisements have a unique advantage over other means of advertising, in that the free phone service incentive makes phone subscribers quite receptive to the information presented in the telephone advertisement. Also, every person who calls the 801 number receives the ads, whereas other media make it relatively easy for viewers to ignore ads by switching stations or paging ahead. As a result, telephone ads are more effective than ads in other formats, the newspaper said. Currently, a company investing in a telephone ad can be sure that its ad will have been heard by 1 million people within two months. Companies are swarming to the Telephone Office to apply for advertising space.