Smartphone users can face a lot of advertising. We have ads on websites we view with our phones, ads before videos on YouTube, and ads in free apps. With all these cases, someone else is making money of our ad-viewing, and offers us a product or service as compensation. What if you could just get that money directly? That’s what a startup called SmartAds is thinking about, and would pay users to view its ads on their lock screens.

In a way, that’s already like the sort of ad support built-in to the Kindle Fire HD, the ads that help subsidize the cost of the tablet, which you can pay extra to remove. Except, with SmartAds, you’re making the conscious decision to view these ads, and get to pocket the proceeds.

Right now, SmartAds is trying to raise money on Indiegogo, so it’s not at all clear if its project will ever come to fruition, but if it does, users would be able to view these ads on their lock screens and make up to $25 a month doing so. You might elect to get that money yourself, or SmartAds might let it go straight to your carrier to come off your monthly bill.

The company claims its ads would be unobtrusive, and could be dismissed in less than a second to return you to your regular lock screen. We’ve got plenty of questions about just how this would all work, but it’s really not a bad idea; assuming SmartAds can get the advertisers it needs lined up, we bet that plenty of smartphone users would volunteer to be a part of this.