March 14, 2023 - Atlanta Wire

Sanjoy Paul – Inventor of RingBack Tone Advertising

Atlanta Wire Staff on March 14, 2023

RBT-Ads, also known as RingBack Tone Advertising, Ad RingBack, Ad-RBT, Voice Ads, or Biz-Ring, is a form of advertising that replaces the standard acoustic signal a caller hears when calling another phone with advertisements or other promotional messages. These services are provided by wireless carriers, calling cards, infrastructure vendors, ad networks, media agencies, and free information services. This inventory of ad space allows mobile service providers to monetize the Ringback tone period and in turn, offer free or very inexpensive wireless services to consumers and subscribers.

The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) released the first guidelines regulating RingBack Tone Advertisement, a new type of advertising that competes with traditional media such as TV, radio, newspaper, and the Internet. Studies have shown that in the United States, RingBack Tone advertisements are the second most accepted form of mobile advertising by consumers. This type of advertising provides an alternative way for brands to reach their target audience and increase their visibility.

The global opportunity for Ad‐RBTs is immense, estimated at approximately 12 billion inbound calls per day from the 3 billion global mobile subscribers. Interactive Reverse Ringback Tones have a reported average clickthrough rate of 2.5%, with a wide variance from 0% up to 7.5%, depending on the advertisement.

Ad-RBTs (RingBack Tone advertising) have the potential to deliver approximately 48 million paid advertisements per day, slightly higher than Google’s pay-per-click search advertising interactions on the web. Furthermore, Ad-RBTs present a mobile experience that can be shared between users, giving it the potential to expand virally if the content is engaging, interesting, funny, or related to brands or causes that people are passionate about. Following the trend of this new service, Sanjoy Paul strived to obtain a patent for RingBack advertisement.

Sanjoy Paul is a renowned Indian-American computer scientist, technology executive, business consultant, and author. Born on January 22, 1962, Sanjoy is the global managing director at Accenture and part-time teaching faculty in the Computer Science Department of Rice University. He is widely known for his research works in the areas of the Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning (AI/ML), Computer Networks, 5G and Wireless Networks, Multimedia Streaming, and Content Distribution.

Growing in his interest, Sanjoy became the founder and CEO of several companies, such as RelevantAd Technologies Inc., a contextual advertising company, DigiNotebooks, an EdTech company for next-generation digital schools, comprehensively addressing the needs of parents, students, teachers, and school management, and Almawiz Inc., a digital contact center and lead generation company. His entrepreneurial and research efforts have greatly contributed to the technological landscape.

Dr. Paul achieved remarkable academic success throughout his career, beginning with an All-India Rank of 35 in the IIT JEE exam. He graduated top of the class from IIT Kharagpur, before pursuing his Master’s and Ph.D. from the University of Maryland. To further his education, from 2003 to 2005, Sanjoy pursued an MBA at Wharton Business School, University of Pennsylvania. Upon completion of his degree, he was hired as the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of WhenU, an Internet startup backed by Trident Capital. WhenU developed technology for contextual advertising without tracking clickstream and without creating user profiles. His interest in contextual advertising led Sanjoy to launch his own company, RelevantAd Technologies, which delivered contextual and relevant advertising on Cable Television. This innovative product was showcased to Comcast, CableVision, Charter Communications, and Time Warner Cables and it generated significant interest among them. RelevantAd Technologies specialized in hyper-local advertisements via Yellow Pages on TV, and piloted the product in a Walt Disney hotel in Orlando, Florida in partnership with Infovalue Computing Systems (now called Vytio: Vytio IPTV Solutions).

Later in 2006, Sanjoy, along with Ram Batni, and Robert Brunetti had an innovative idea: to introduce advertising in the brief moment between when a call is made and the connection is established with the called party. Consequently, a patent was filed for this concept, which was granted on February 26, 2013 (US Patent: 8385514 “Providing an Advertisement to a Calling Party before RingBack”).

His idea was supported by the ideology based on the concept that communication networks and associated methods are disclosed and they can provide an advertisement or other type of informational message to a calling party before providing RingBack tones. When a call is placed from the calling party to the called party, the call processing for that call is momentarily suspended by the communication network. Once an advertisement has been chosen for the call, the communication network starts delivering it to the caller. The communication network resumes call processing for the call after the advertisement is sent to the calling party. In resuming call processing, the communication network provides ringback tones to the calling party and attempts to connect the call to the called party. This service has become ubiquitous in Indian mobile phone services. However, in the US, it is utilized only when a call is on hold.

RingBack Tone advertising is a powerful tool for businesses to reach potential customers and promote their products and services. With it, businesses can target specific customers with tailored audio messages, informing them about new products or services, special offers, and more. In addition, its ability to allow businesses to engage their customers by prompting them to take an action, such as visiting their website or calling back is quite unparalleled. Thus, by leveraging its usage, Sanjoy Paul has succored businesses to increase brand awareness, boosting customer engagement, and driving sales.

Mark David – Started from Scratch in A Bid to Follow His Dreams

Atlanta Wire Staff on March 14, 2023

Image commercially licensed from: Unsplash

Transition isn’t just about switching careers and doing something diverse, but in reality, involves the redesigning of a person’s entire lifestyle. It’s a challenging decision that people take after rethinking and evaluating their feelings about their current life, and how they wish to spend it in the future. A career transition does not always take place because of more money or a fancier title, but because of the drive and the inner voice of a person which pushes them to do better and experience something different. Although a career transition may seem simple, it is actually very complex in nature and there is a lot more to it if we dig deep enough. A transition can prove to be an impetus and catalyst in transforming a person’s career, even though it seems chaotic.

The most difficult transition is when a person is starting from scratch and doesn’t have a strong support system. The toughest industry to dive into is the entertainment industry and if a person doesn’t have the necessary links and connections, surviving in the industry becomes even more difficult. One person who without any contacts, experience or support made a successful transition from the music to the filmmaking industry is Mark David.

David, who is now an award-winning producer, director, cinematographer and a renowned public figure of the entertainment industry, started off his professional career as a rock drummer. Since his childhood, he had a passion for movies and filmmaking and for this sole purpose he enrolled himself in the New York University Tisch School of the Arts in 1995 in order to study filmmaking and acting. Despite studying music law in 1996 from the Washington State University, his quest to learn more about movies didn’t end and in order to achieve this objective, he got into the Austin Community College, St. Thomas University and USC to study more about drama and cinematography.

David’s journey to the top was not easy and because he was making such a huge transition from one industry to another, he faced many obstacles and hurdles on his way to glory. In the 1990’s, David started his professional career as a rock drummer and later collaborated with William Tabanou, his old bandmate, to create New Breed Syndicate for writing tracks for his second feature film named Intoxicating. During his music career, David got the opportunity to collaborate and work with many famous musicians like Doug Pinnick and Ben Sheperd. After a series of successful collaborations, David’s album Ultrarev was signed by Feudal Records in 2010 and included two tracks of singer DuG Pinnick. He also united with his childhood friends Gabriel Ordonez and Dean Truitt to create, record and write the original soundtrack of his film Jonny’s Sweet Revenge.

David stepped into the visual medium in 1996 as the director of his old rock band’s music video, The Agency, which was later launched at the SXSW Film Festival competition. The first feature film that he directed was the Sweet Thing in 1997 and the rest is history. Sweet Thing acted as a stepping stone in David’s career and cleared his pathway in the filmmaking industry. During his illustrious career, David got the opportunity to work with the likes of famous actors such as Rip Torn, Val Kilmer, Priscilla Barnes Blake Clark, Cloris Leachman, Peter Falk, Ronnie Gene Blevins, Bruce Dern, Lin Shaye and Diane Ladd, which further cemented his place in the entertainment industry. After working as a director of photography for some time, David decided to establish his own production company named it the Buffalo Speedway Film Co. in 2000. Ever since its inception, David has produced and directed numerous films under the banner of Buffalo Speedway Film Co. and has worked in association with Rogue Arts to distribute more than forty films. In 2014, he laid the foundation of his own post-production company, the Bomb Shelter in LA, California. From the beginning of his filmmaking career to 2022, David has lensed about 60 narrative feature films as a cinematographer.

David loves to showcase nature in his movies and therefore chooses exotic and remote locations like Siberian tundra and Rocky Mountains for shootings. His famous projects include MR-9 (2023), Hostile Territory (2022), The Great Alaskan Race (2018) and Impuratus (2023), Project Legion (2022), Slotherhouse (2023), Switch Up (2023), American Cowslip (2010), Get Gone, A Woman Betrayed, The Preacher’s Daughter, Jonny’s Sweet Revenge (2016), Texas Heart (2016), Boy Makes Girl (2018), Starf*cker (2022), Sunlight (2023), Joycamp: GOING Postal (2016), Low Lifes (2012) and Coast to Coast Cheerleaders (2013). He is currently working on his film Spy, which will be releasing in 2024.

David has an extremely decorated career, receiving many awards throughout, such as The Best Feature Film Award for his film American Cowslip at the Albuquerque film festival (2010), The Best Feature Film Award for Texas Heart at the Albuquerque film festival (2016) and various best director, best producer, best original score and audience awards for the movie Jonny’s Sweet Revenge at different global events.

Mark David has shown us through his career transition that if a person plays his cards right with determination, he might be closer to his success than he thinks. If a person approaches his goals with commitment, conviction and curiosity, he has a better chance to achieve it. Although a transition would not guarantee success, but it will also not leave us with the regret of not trying.