JiWire Pushes Ad-Supported Wi-Fi

Ina Sebastian | July 31, 2007, 12:08 PM

This article in the Wall Street Journal discusses issues of providing free citywide networks supported by advertisement, and attracting enough advertisers to carry the network costs. JiWire is a company that developed from public Wi-Fi directory to providing such “mobile broadband advertising networks” to citywide service providers. They work for example with MetroFi and MSN (Portland), and Kite Networks (Arizona).

Muni networks are ramping up slowly – Portland has more than 13,000 monthly users now – and present an opportunity to advertisers in the coming years. That is assuming networks deliver sufficient speed to be appealing to users, and advertisements will not be too frequent. MetroFi for example uses a landing page, a browser-independent ad-bar, and interstitials.

We are skeptical about the capability of advertisement to support citywide network cost in the short term. It is great to leverage these networks as test beds for consumer behavior on mobile broadband networks, to test location-specific advertisement and applications, and to draw users to web portals and sites. However, there are not enough frequent users yet, and they are most interested in local content (there is low inventory).

The good news for national advertisers (in particular those with a local presence) is, there is an emerging segment of nomadic public Wi-Fi consumers who use access daily. They are more likely to go beyond basic applications (like e-mail, search for local information and online news) during their longer session times. They are also more willing to to purchase products and services, provide personal information and click on ads.