Pico-Pay(tm) - Press Releases

Pico-Pay has released a whitepaper today and launches a service which allows the creators and publishers of MP3 and other music and online multimedia content, to generate pay-per-view revenue, via web-hosted Micropayments.

Pico-Pay is a next-generation, advertiser-funded micropayment gateway, which uses simple technology to bring the well-understood paradigm of free-to-air radio and television content, funded by advertising, to the Internet. Through Pico-Pay, advertisers are given a platform for targeting consumers based on specified music, video or other categories and interests and are offered guaranteed click-through rates on all their advertising. In turn, music and video publishers or creators are able to request a minimum micropayment prior to consumers being allowed access to their content.

In essence, the advertisers pay the music publishers a set amount for their customers' full attention during a short 'ad-break'. With this approach, the consumer acquires the music or video content totally free of charge, just as with television or radio stations. Pico-Pay is also totally free for content publishers to use as well.

Pico-Pay users will need only a web-browser to gain full access to all the features; no additional programs, plugins or technologies are required.

Manager of the Pico-Pay service, Con Zymaris comments: "By allowing very low cost items (for example digital music tracks downloadable for US50c to US$1.00 each) to be merchantable online, Pico-Pay ushers in an era whereby consumers can quickly, simply and ultimately at no cost to themselves, acquire this material in a friction-free manner."

He added: "We hope that through the adoption of this style of micropayments technology throughout the Internet, the publishing and acquisition of premium digital content (music, clips, videos) can become a viable and economically sustainable marketplace with advantages for consumers, revenue for the producers of the content and more effective advertising for the marketing community."

view whitepaper

It seems an italian technology website, Tiscali Tecnologia, has picked up on the Pico-Pay vibe and has posted an article. For the multi-lingual among us: "L'idea arriva dall'Australia dove, la Pico-pay, ha ideato un progetto di sicuro successo." If your italian is as good as ours, see how you go with the English Translation.

whole article

"Imagine a provider wants to charge 50 cents for access to a piece of content -- it could be a music track, material from a newspaper archive, or anything else that can be Web delivered. Pico-Pay presents the user with a list of advertisements and the credit offered for viewing each one. These ads are presented using normal Web technologies and may be single pages or a collection of hyperlinked material. The trick is that the ad must be displayed for a certain period of time (perhaps 20 seconds) before the user receives credit, encouraging exploration by the user."

whole article

"Called Pico-Pay, the technology is essentially a micropayments gateway that sees advertisers pay content providers indirectly for the amount of time Web users spend viewing ads while seeking content. Zymaris came up with the business model and developed the necessary technology after noticing a worrying downturn in Web content in the last 18 months. Companies that offer content for viewing or download, and companies that offer free services such as e-mail or calendaring, have found there is no viable business model outside banner advertising, which has suffered from doubts over click-through rates. As such, many free Internet services are shutting down, and many news content sites are moving to a subscription model to cover their costs."

whole article

Pico-Pay, a revolutionary payment gateway, is entering a free-trial period from the 1st of April, 2002, for a period of 9 months. During this time, advertisers, content publishers, will be able to trial the Pico-Pay technology to determine if it can help them improve their web business and usage.

Pico-Pay is a web-hosted micropayment gateway that all website, multimedia, music, video or even micro-applet publishers can utilise in order to generate revenue from premium content.

Pico-Pay uses simple technology to bring the proven concept of free-to-air radio and television, funded by advertising, to the Internet. Advertisers are given a platform for targeting consumers based on specific categories and interests, and are only required to pay when users stay on their site for a minimum amount of time. Content publishers are provided with a simple interface through which they may co-ordinate the selling of specific items of premium content through the Pico-Pay system. The non-intrusive gateway means that intergrating Pico-Pay into an existing website requires minimal work by site maintainers and opens the door to significant revenue increases for publishers than would otherwise be possible.

Pico-Pay utilises only industry and defacto web-protocol standards. Users of the service need only a web-browser to gain full access to all the features; no additional software is required.

"We are very excited about making the Pico-Pay service available on the Internet." manager of the service, Con Zymaris said, "We believe it to be uniquely and genuinely in a position to assist struggling web-site publishers generate real revenue for their efforts, and give the advertising industry the management, auditing and value that they have sought from the Internet for so many years."

"Two of the very important reasons why we believe that Pico-Pay will succeed in making micropayments (even ones as small as US10c per transaction) viable, is that unlike other micropayments technologies, with Pico-Pay, consumers do not need to supply any information about themselves whatsoever, thus remaining totally anonymous, and of equal importance, they don't pay for the content they are acquiring; advertisers pay on their behalf when the content-consumers visit the advertisers' web properties as co-ordinated by the Pico-Pay gateway."

"By using the Pico-Pay gateway to cover the cost of premium content from their favourite websites, web users are able to acquire and browse in total anonymity, and at no cost to themselves. They will also know that they are helping to fund and perpetuate web-sites that are important to themselves and others." Zymaris added. "A viable micropayments system has been looked-upon as the holy-grail of keeping the online economy, online, and we believe we have helped to construct just such a system."

Pico-Pay is the leading advertiser-funded micropayment gateway, and has been in development for over 9 months. Pico-Pay is a registered trademark.

Please forward reader enquiries to: Con Zymaris
Manager of the Pico-Pay service
info@pico-pay.com
Fax: +61 3 9642 5998
Web: http://www.pico-pay.com