First there was Vonage, which charged users directly for VoIP service. Then there was Skype, which gave it away for free. Now there is a third business model in the works that offers free minutes in exchange for watching IP video feeds.

Globe7 has just come out with the Globe7 3.0 soft phone for the desktop that allows users to download real-time video feeds – such as movie trailers, news and sports – anchored by 30- or 60-second ad spots. The more video is viewed, the more minutes are added to the user’s VoIP account.

“It’s ad-supported, but the motivation is that users get the kind of video content they want,” said David Buchanan, CEO of te-na-city, a Venic, CA, -based firm that manages the advertising for Globe7. “Everything happens in real time, so the credits are applied immediately.”

In addition to pulling content from Globe7’s library, which is tied to the Associated Press archive, users can upload their own content on 1 GB of secured space.

Globe 7 launched the service earlier this month and has since registered about 18 million downloads of the software, according to the company’s Web site. Registration is free and there are no monthly costs. In fact, Globe7 starts each new service with $1 of phone time. Customers can either view the videos to earn minutes or pay directly into an account.

“We’re finding that people like to use the ad service, which is fine with us,” Buchanan said. “The ad revenue sometimes comes in the form of a strict branding type of arrangement, payed by the number of impressions that are made, or sometimes it’s in combination with revenue-sharing opportunities.”

One example of revenue-sharing is a partnership with LiveNation, a live-event promoter that will provide two-minute clips for download on the Globe7 platform. Globe7, in turn, will receive a share of the revenue generated by customers who link to the LiveNation web site and order a full DVD.

Buchanan added that an ad-supported market is the next logical step in VoIP evolution.

“You have Vonage (News - Alert), which has no ad-revenue model and has acquired about 3 million users. But they lost $190 million last year,” he said. “And then you have Skype (News - Alert), which gives most of its service away for free, and I think we learned in the dot-com bust that free is not a viable business model. At some point, you have to pay for things like call termination, long-distance fees…”

The company is planning to launch a Wi-Fi version of the system within the next two months. The “hard phone” system will reside on a PDA, allowing users to make phone calls, surf the web, email and all the other tasks that the PDA offers.

In the meantime, Globe7 is actively pursuing relationships with a number of hardware, software and service organizations, as well as VARs and resellers, to integrate the platform onto their product lines. The company recently signed a private label agreement with Lycos Phone, allowing the platform to be distributed under the Lycos brand.

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Arthur Cole is a freelance writer specializing in high-tech information and communications.