Advertisers Face Hurdles on Social Networking Sites
The moment I saw this headlines, it just reminds me of the local blog advertising industry - namely Nuffnang and Advertlets. The point is whether they are doing well or the advertisers in Malaysia plainly believes in the online ads that able to penetrate the niche market?
And when they try to take advantage of new “social advertising,” extending their commercial message to a member’s friends, their ads will be noticed, all right, but not necessarily favorably. Members are understandably reluctant to become shills. IDC, the technology research firm, published a study last month that reported that just 3 percent of Internet users in the United States would willingly let publishers use their friends for advertising. The report described social advertising as “stillborn.”
All Web sites that rely on ads struggle to a greater or lesser extent to convert traffic, even high traffic, into meaningful revenue. Ads that run on Google and other search engines are a profitable exception because their visitors are often in a buying mood. Other kinds of sites, however, can’t deliver similar visitors to advertisers. Google’s own YouTube, which relies heavily, like Facebook, on user-generated content, remains a costly experiment in the high-traffic, low-revenue ad business.
Financial data would show the current state of Facebook’s advertising, but none are available. Facebook is privately held and a spokesman told me that it does not disclose revenue or any information about its ad sales.
I have encounter this before. Putting up a similar sites like Youtube or anything that relies heavily on the ad business seems to be unjust recently. Especially when the cost to maintain the high traffic in return of the low revenue.
When it comes to ads placement, it does not matter whether where we position it anymore. Most blog readers and bloggers are immune to the ads. It is like we got used to the potholes in City of Kuala Lumpur and we become very good at avoiding it. Just plainly ignore it and continue with the blog hopping.
It has been more than a year since both Advertlets and Nuffnang inception earlier 2007. Their business seems to grow as the take up rate of bloggers and those alike increases. However, I am really wondering if the advertisers are really getting a nick out of their marketing on the online ads.
IMHO, I believe it takes more than just ads at the sidebar or the header to create the impact. Rather, web-advertorial or some event inviting the bloggers are among the ways to leverage on the blogosphere influence in Malaysia. Just look at the events they went and when they ping the blog aggregrator sites like PetalingStreet for example, it just generating the buzz.
After a week or two, the buzz dies off replacing with new one from different advertisers. What left is the links and only those links will remain…
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