VoIP Inc. nabs deals with Google, ’30 Rock’

Internet telephony provider VoIP Inc. is finding the marketing world to be a lucrative space for its service. The company today announced it is teaming up once again with VariTalk, this time to produce a marketing campaign for the TV show “30 Rock” that will use VoIP Inc.’s click-to-talk capability to let consumers send personalized voice and email messages from actor Alec Baldwin.

Even bigger news, though not as formally announced, is VoIP Inc.’s selection by Google to provide the click-to-talk technology for Google Maps globally and for Google’s new AdWords service in India. The Google relationship follows the successful marketing campaigns conducted last summer with VariTalk to promote the movie “Snakes on a Plane” and the TV show “America’s Next Top Model.”

The company is banking on growth of the business-to-business marketing segment, said Tony Cataldo, who took over as chairman and CEO in September, following the resignation of Gary Post as president and CEO. Cataldo has been charged with cleaning up the company’s balance sheet and positioning VoIP Inc. for the future.

“We think the real business for click-to-call is in business-to-business part,” said Cataldo in an interview this week. “There are three categories for this business--the promotional in the form of ‘Snakes’; business to business, which represents the larger part of the revenue stream for any click-to-call business; and the third is the consumer, which is a nice piece of business, don’t get me wrong.”

In the case of Google Maps, VoIP’s click-to-call technology is incorporated to enable a user of Google Maps to make a one-click connection to a business, once that business has been located through the Google Maps process. The service is free to consumers, and VoIP is paid on a per-usage basis by Google.

“Say you are looking in Google Maps for hotels in Beverly Hills--it will give you 14 or so hotels up, and beneath it allows you to click and call,” Cataldo explained. “The first time, it will ask you for your phone number, you plug it in one time, after that your number is on there until you change it. Then you click on it, your phone would automatically ring and you would be connected to the hotel.”

What separates his new company from other VoIP providers, such as Vonage or Skype, is that VoIP Inc. operates its own network and can support a high-volume of Internet phone calls at a very low per-call cost, Cataldo said.

“We have our own technology, our own softswitches, our own network--and we can handle millions of minutes a month,” he said. “Our cost basis is very low, so we can provide the service as a reasonable price to our customers.”

The promotional campaigns are garnering great attention right now. Last summer’s “Snakes on a Plane” promotion is credited with giving that movie a much greater than anticipated opening weekend.

“They used our technology to promote the opening weekend of that film,” Cataldo said. “People could click on the Web site to have Samuel L. Jackson call a friend or neighbor. That person would hear his recorded voice saying, ‘Get yourself to the theater.’ There were 6 million of those calls in a few days, and that opening was a lot larger than they anticipated. We then did the same campaign with ‘America’s Next Top Model,’ using Tyra Banks’ voice.”

The NFL Network is using a similar approach, but consumers click to be connected to a video service provider, such as Verizon, DirecTV, Dish Network or the cable company, to sign up for the new network.

Business-to-business communications will be more extensive, Cataldo said, and will take advantage of things such as GPS-enabled cell phones to enable company’s such as Starbucks to contact individuals when they are physically close to a given store and offer to put in a coffee order that will be waiting when the customer arrives.

“We bring some pretty significant functionality in our middleware,” he said. “The business model is kicking in now, and working, and that is making us busy.”

Going forward, however, he doesn’t discount the possibility that VoIP Inc. could be an acquisition target. The company owns patents in the softswitch, VoIP and Internet faxing areas, Cataldo said, based on the technical work of Shawn Lewis, still the CTO of VoIP Inc. Building up both its business and consumer client base only increases the company’s value, he said.