Free phone calls via Ibibo.com and Facebook.com

The Intex Mobile social banner ad units will empower Ibibo and Facebook users to make free phone calls to their friends

To create awareness about the video calling facility of its IN 4470 mobile phone model, Intex Technologies, the owner of the Intex brand of mobile phones, has kick-started a month long interactive banner advertising campaign.

As part of the campaign, the brand will serve social banner ads on Ibibo.com. The ads will enable Ibibo members to make free phone calls to their friends. In the first week, ads will be served randomly only on the profile pages of Ibibo.com users (approximately 3 million unique visitors per month). Later, the Intex Mobile IN 4470 banner ads will be displayed on each webpage of Ibibo.com.

How will it make calling possible? The banner ad unit will be small in size and have some text such as 'Ab baat karo Face to Face with Intex IN 4470 mobile phone. Call for free', with phone images embedded on it. It will prompt users to click. When clicked, the ad will redirect the user to a landing page, where the user will find a virtual IN 4470 mobile phone with some more details. Thereafter, the user will be required to enter or key-in his own and the receiver's mobile contact numbers to make a phone call.

Once done, the caller will get a call from a landline number, which will first inform him that the call is sponsored by the Intex IN 4470 phone and later, connect him with the other user (receiver).

As soon as the call gets connected, a webpage will open, which will showcase two virtual IN 4470 mobile phones, along with the photographs of the caller and the receiver showcased inside the mobile phones' screens. The photos will be retrieved from the profile photos of Ibibo members.

In case an Ibibo member calls a user who is not a registered member with Ibibo.com, the photograph of the receiver will not be displayed. "This whole process will virtually demonstrate the capability of video calling on the IN 4470 mobile phone," says Vinayak Kumar Lal, general manager, marketing, Intex Technologies, in a conversation with afaqs!.

After the call is over, the banner will automatically update the profile status or news feed of the Ibibo.com user indicating that the member has made a phone call using the IN 4470. "Status update functionality through the usage of banner ad will provide us word of mouth marketing and also prompt other members of the site to try it," Lal says.

Interestingly, to provide additional reach and engagement, Intex Technologies has integrated other social networking platforms such as Facebook and Orkut within the ad campaign.

The landing page of the Intex banner ad on Ibibo.com will provide an option to the user to invite or share the banner ad with their friends on other social networking sites. For instance, an Ibibo.com member can share the ad with friends on Facebook. In this case, the Facebook user will receive a news update - which will have a clickable thumbnail sized picture of the ad unit - on his/her profile page. The user can click on it to access and make phone calls. However, banner ads will not be served directly on Facebook.

To raise the level of engagement, the mobile phone company has decided to offer only three minutes of free phone calls initially. If the user wants to use the banner ad unit further or wants to make more calls, he/she will be required to earn talk time by inviting more friends on Ibibo and other social networks to try it.

Lal says that the campaign is targeted towards youth in metros. He claims that the banner ads are live for about five days and the company has already received about 2 lakh clicks on them.

Surprisingly, the ad unit is conceptualised by Intex Technologies and Ibibo.com jointly and no digital agency was roped in for this process. The IN 4470 is priced at about Rs 3,000.