Every Safaricom user can attest to the frustration that comes with realising that your data bundles are expired or depleted. Of course, Safaricom makes sure to inform you of this by redirecting you to the top-up page. However, this seems to have changed as users are now logged on to a new site that Safaricom very quietly rolled out. Dubbed ZeroD, the site instantly asks you to watch some video ads in exchange for data rewards. The alternative to this is to obviously purchase data that hurts your wallet.

Choosing to watch the ads then takes you to another page that is designed to present you with the sponsored clips. But as we have observed, the site offers more than that as it also has a catalogue of some of the latest news updates from various news sites. Luckily, you do not get updates from sketchy sites which makes it look legit enough.

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Despite various attempts, we barely got to see any video ad which meant that we were not getting any data as a reward. According to Twitter user Nick Tembo (@iamtembo) though, the site presented only one ad that in turn ended up with free data. So, it is only a matter of you trying it out to see whether you will receive the ad as well.

Good Idea From Safaricom?

Generally, the ZeroD site does seem like a really good idea from Safaricom and one that the telco might move on with for the future. Instead of just forcing your users to buy purchase, why not have them watch an ad for free data instead? In fact, the site seems to have been worked on well as it offers various news categories that users can choose from.

So, this could be seen as a B2B (Business-to-Business) approach to increasing streams of revenue by Safaricom. Having companies pay for ads for subscribers to watch for free data definitely sounds like a good concept. However, there is still nothing clear about Safaricom’s plans with all this or even when the site was launched.