Flossie thumbs its nose at display advertising
In June last year there was a blaze of publicity surrounding Flossie.com, a female-centric masthead that brought together the ‘best of the best’ female focused websites. But the blaze has well and truly subsided, advertising reality has bitten and Flossie Media Group has now decided to turn its back on the display advertising model.
Chief executive Jenene Freer said in a release: “From January 2010 we will no longer be offering display advertising as part of our service and will be morphing our business to focus purely on one-to-one communication with our core product being focused on an automated and aggregated email service. This will include solus emails and newsletters – plus content syndication and integration into social media.”
Since its inception last year, Freer says changes in the advertising market have meant the company was forced to review the entire portfolio of products and the way it operates in New Zealand and Australia.
Smaller networks are struggling to sustain revenue from display advertising because without owning eyeballs “it is difficult to negotiate the large scale deals that the portals are able to offer”.
“We know we can deliver engaging one-on-one communication within the niche communities of our publishers. As a great example of how effective this communication channel can be, $1,000 spent on display would drive on average 100 clicks, whereas the equivalent spent on a newsletter would drive 600.”
Flossie Media Group will also be moving its head office to Sydney and campaign management and product development will be conducted from there. A satellite sales team will operate in New Zealand from January 2010.
Matt O’Sullivan, director at Naked, thinks the move to a cost per action or affiliate model is a trend worth watching and expects more publishers with small numbers of loyal readers to follow suit.
But sites like Flossie need to be careful because there is a fine line between spamming and “advocate marketing”.
“Readers expect a little bit more from them. That’s why they’ve got that relationship,” he says. Cross the line and it runs the risk of becoming a site where users are paid to be advertised to, like Hooha.
Recent statistics from the Interactive Advertising Bureau indicate online is one of the few sectors of advertising on the rise. But does display advertising work? Who clicks on banners these days? And can you legally drive your car while playing the harmonica?
Jenene
December 4, 2009
Completely agree, a very valid consideration. The EMS strategy we are taking on board is signficantly outside of just 'solus' email – will incorporate a lot of relevant content. An area we've been doing well with nzgirl and other sites for quite some time, just expanding it out network wide. Will be interested to hear your feedback on it once the packages are in the market to view as well. Thanks for your feedback.
dave
December 4, 2009
Why are medium publishers that average over 50,000 uniques a month considered small by agencies that book online. With weekly visitors/readership as large as some magazines circulations. We are without a doubt disadvantaged when it comes to advertising and being solely responsible for driving response. Display advertising is the same as buying outdoor media, purchasing a radio ad, tvc or a print ad. The difficulty with CPC/CPA campaigns is that we are at the complete mercy of the creative/call to action. Whatever happened to brand equity ? Something needs to change here – Rupert Murdochs recent article in NZHerald raises an interesting point. Will users pay for quality content in an ever changing media environment?
john@sitemanagernow
December 4, 2009
Interesting article except for the old chestnut about nobody seeing or clicking on display ads – give me a break, you can say the same thing about pretty much any advertising, but the reality is different.
The challenge for all the online ad networks is that it is often difficult to generate meaningful amounts of revenue from smaller niche sites – for themselves or the site owners(if the network doesn't own the sites).
Is cost per action the answer? I suppose it all comes down to how many actions you can generate/sell.
Good on you for rattling the digital cage again Jenene.
Jenene
December 15, 2009
Thanks John….
Funny thing is that it wasn't my intention!!