A group of us had a small get together and started discussing about the future of online advertising. It’s great how Google has monopolized the online market and considerably push the opportunities you could get from online advertising.
While discussing about the types of advertisers that now exist from the Adsense type model to the ones like Chitika, we also started debating and questioning each other why we think not all corporate websites have hosted advertisements on their websites.
After all, it would make a lot of extra income for them, right?
In the discussion, I contributed that the main reason you don’t see all corporate websites have ads is because they’d like to keep their professionalism. However, this is only a personal assumption and not from the words of the corporate website owner themselves.
One of us still insisted that if the ads could bring in a revenue of RM10,000 a year then won’t the corporate website owners be interested in putting ads on their website. As much as I’d agree with the greed of the common human being, there still are the principles and practices of professionalism in a person.
Then, another friend said that corporate websites like Lelong, MOL, and eBay are definetely getting heaps of money from ads. Well, I do as well agree but then I replied if this were the case then it depends if the type of website would actually befitting for ads.
The whole conversation that could’ve lasted more than 3 cups of drinks had to end for me. I don’t think they came to a conclusion yesterday. That’s why I’d like to ask the opinions or reasons you might have.
Why do corporate website not have advertisements if there’s an opportunity to earn an extra RM10,000 a year from it?
Personally, and this is just my view, the lack of advertising on professional sites is because of retaining a professional standing. Say you own a law office and not only have a brick and mortar building, but information about you on a website. If a potential client walks into your office, they would expect to see a nice office totally geared toward your business. Now, if a client walks into a law office and it also displays a complete legal library, a legal newspaper, legal forms and a software, then a client may wonder if the laywer was well versed in their business.
The same affect applies to a website. Although small ads, such as a well displayed Adsense may not produce adverse effects, but potential clients expect to see a website according to what they are used to seeing offline in the real world – and if you “appear” to be a jack of all “legal” trades – then that will water down the appearance that you are an expert in your field.
I do not say this works for all professionals – as I myself, have dabbled in putting advertising on my site. The results – fewer Quote requests from higher paying customers – and more tire kickers.
I also have a client that tastefully put up sponsor ads – but these are their own designs and only 4 text ads / month are accepted. She gest $150/month for these advertisers. Adn it blends very well into her site – so is not obtrusive or blatently an advertisement.
Impression is everything. Also, making the extra income is not as important as gaining clients – $10,000/year is a small client in the world of Advertising. Plus, 80% of your icome comes form 20% of your cient base. Such Advertising just may not be worth the risk if you wish to retain such clients.
Luckily for me, I was just testing my site and am actually 3/4 retired – so the affect was minimal.
Just my opinion.
SF Parrott
OneWay Advertising & Design
ChitikaNews.com
Does “corporate image/brand” ring a bell? I’ve never seen ads on corporate sites, especially whose business isn’t web-based. I’ll start plastering ads all over mine if I spot a single text ad at microsoft.com.
I think ads are strictly for service oriented websites, such as ebay or friendster. If you’re selling/promoting a product on your site, I don’t agree that there should be ads. It just looks weird. The effort should be directed at improving your product or the website. Don’t forget you still have to filter through the ads.. you want rival products listed there right??
They don’t want people to be distracted from their product brand, all the corporate care is about their product brand and services. That’s how they brainwash people to believe and use them
Parrott:
I totally understand where and how you’re interpreting the message. And you’ve also provided a good example of how one company did it by blending their ads so not to be intrusive.
Jonathan:
You’re thinking as to what I was when I was sipping my drink. The type of websites that should’ve ads is very important in my opinon. However, in terms of rival products I think that shouldn’t be a problem as long the advertisements are something that upsells products according to the corporate website.
Mypapit:
That’s another interesting point of why some corporate websites insist of not having ads on their website.
But do some of these corporate website owners not put ads because they can’t find the right advertisers?
I think the biggest part is that they wish to sell their product. As far as not putting up ads because of the lack of the “right sponsors” I don’t think that is even an issue. To put your competition on your site is ludacris in the eyes of the offline businessperson – and any businessperson for that matter. Even if these ads may be “complementary” the goal of a corporate site is to gain customers to their product – not send them somewhere else.
Why give them the option to leave your site other than backing out? If you have a good product, but a link sounds interesting, they may leave your site, look around, click another link and get hopelessly lost – never to return, even if they wanted to.
As I said – the additional “income” is not their focus – customers are and should be. A professional corporate site should be devoid of ads.
Ads no matter how unobtrusive are ugly. They don’t really belong but people might choose them just to make that little bit extra.
Putting ads in a Professional website is ugly.
Do they really need short-term monetary gains? Personally I think ads are a sell-out. I understand their necessity but they shouldn’t be there for the sake of being there.
Like if you see MAYBANK or,.. RHB Bank websites with an advertising, it straight off gives me the impression that they’re looking for chump change.
To each his own I guess.
This is probably due to concentrating on their core business rather than diversifying.
Most companies see the Internet more of an exposure thing (“Everybody has a web site, why not us?”) rather than an additional revenue stream.
I’ve experimented with ads on a corporate web site (my previous employer’s) using Google Adsense. I came to an interesting conclusion: Contextual ads are bad for business.
It’s not because the contextual algorithm used by AdSense doesn’t complement our web content. The problem is, it works too well. It plastered ads relating to similar services that we provided, but by competitors!
But don’t you think that depending on the consumer target of the corporate website, then only the ads on the website would be effective?
For instance, if we took a website selling wooden tiling like Ekowood, what type of ads would actually complete them?