Ad-subsidized mobile video: Where is it ROK Entertainment?

Bruce Renny, Marketing Director of ROK Entertainment

ROK operates FreeBe TV (www.freebe.tv [1] from the UK and www.freebetv.com [2] from the US), which according to the company is "carrier-agnostic, mass-market mobile TV streamed over 2.5G GPRS, EDGE, 3G and WiFi, which is free to view." The company said FreeBe TV [3]counts around 250,000 regular viewers worldwide, 25% of whom are in the United States.

Does ROK have any advertisers on this service? "We have successfully trialed commercial advertising with such brands as Citroen cars and Cadburys chocolate whereby we ran 15-second pre-roll adverts for these and other brands on FreeBe TV," Renny said.

Do you foresee a point when the revenues from advertising could offset the costs of providing the service? "Absolutely, and we'll be at that point in just a few months' time when we exceed 10 million ad-serves a month. Our goal is 1 million regular viewers of FreeBe TV worldwide with more than 20 million ad-serves a month, by the end of the year," Renny said.

Interestingly, Renny said the company believes its ad-funded mobile TV service can sit alongside subscription-based mobile TV offered by the carriers "in a similar way that mainstream free-to-air TV sits alongside cable TV."

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