Free 411 Economics Part III
Regular readers of this blog know that I’m intrigued by the economics of free 411. I first did some guesswork here which I followed up here after Lyn Chitow Oakes, SVP Marketing, Jingle Networks followed up with some thoughtful comments.
A little more was revealed on a podcast by Michael Arrington with the CEO George Garrick. Specifically, Jingle currently has costs of around $0.25 per call, and revenue of $0.20. Around 60% of calls are operator assisted and the average call length is 90 seconds.
From the second part of my analysis, it appears that I was nearly spot on. I was slightly too conservative on the costs and slightly too conservative on the revenue. But basically in the same ball park.
Thanks for keeping us in the loop regarding 1-800-FREE-411, I started using this service after reading this blog and wish them all the luck. Good stuff for free, everyone likes free, right?
You would be surprised at the real economics of the free 411 business. Think intrinsically about the nature of the business: diverting a customer looking for a business from getting what he/she wants to something that is about 20-40% relevant; rarely ever even close to 90% relevancy. At the end of the day, the conversion rates is what makes this business very challenging to monetize.