Remember Blyk? The high-profiled venture that targeted the young UK population with free calls and texts – if they agreed to received targeted advert texts on their mobiles. After launch in 2007, the UK service was shut down 2009. [The Blyk name still exists in e.g. the Netherlands where Vodafone uses the concept.]

The question is if Swedish ad-funded MVNO Wifog – launched yesterday – can make a similar concept fly. Wifog has realised that in 2013, people spend most of their device-interaction time connected to the Internet. Their proposition is therefore data-centric: Watch 2-5 minutes of video adverts a day (you can schedule these) and in return get unlimited data (on 3’s 3G network), 120 minutes of voice and 200 SMSs per month.

Wifog tells advertisers that they can reach the right audience – through targeting and analytics. It’s likely that Wifog’s users will be profiled based on what they use the Internet for – much more powerful than the orginal Blyk concept which was based on end-users selecting their “areas of interest”. The question is just how interesting this is for advertisers in a world where Google – without asking for our opt-in consent – already targets us with device-specific, location-specific and usage-based adverts.