But the Blyk model reminds me most of Timeshare sales. On the beach and in holiday areas around the world, timeshare salespeople cruise the streets asking people if they’d like to see if they can win a prize, a simple 5 field questionnaire later and they *have won a timeshare holiday for two to Tenarife!*, and all they have to do is go with the salesperson and listen to an hour long presentation by a timeshare rep, even if they choose not to buy anything, they get to keep the holiday.

So Blyk is the holiday they’ve just won, and the timeshare rep going on at them for an hour of intense sales pitch is the advertiser on the network. The psychology of our lovely winners in this tale are nowhere near a buy mentality, they have just got something free, and they are darn tooting not going to get convinced to pony up the dollars for whatever it is they’re going to try and sell them. They’re happy to waste an hour or two, they’re on holiday and had no real plans anyway, and hey, they get their next holiday out of it. That said, there are always some who do find themselves convinced, and end up with 10 years of payments on a crappy condo in Corfu.

I think Blyk are going to have an interesting path, I’m on the fence to a degree as to whether it’s going to work, but my gut feeling is that their advertisers aren’t going to see many sales off the back of the high response rate. I think that the reasons for high response/engagement on mobile are obvious, what is less clear is whether anyone is buying anything, which is after all the whole point of advertising in the first place right?