Most times, it is the ideas that are so simple, so obvious that are the best of all.
Chris Dixon points out in a post that if you are relying on advertisers for revenue, you actually need your website visitors to leave your site. So you shouldn’t be too sticky.
He cites Google vs Facebook as an example. Google is obviously designed to get you as fast away from it as possible….they want you clicking on those advertisers, the more often the better. They know you’ll come back of your own free will. Facebook, on the other hand, is very different. It wants you to stay there, and therefore does not offer much hope for advertisers who are waiting for you to click, click click.
Which goes a long way to explain why Google’s revenue is 30x that of Facebook’s.
As Chris says:
Facebook is like a Starbucks where everyone hangs out for hours but almost never buys anything.
This only applies to ads that want to be clicked. Maybe ads should simply want to be viewed? For brand building, for instance. (Chris refers to this as “intent generating advertising” as opposed to “harvest generating advertising). He suggest the big brands will have to rethink their approach.
They would be smart to look at our local Daily Maverick, which has done the thinking for them. The advertising model there is clearly built for brand awareness, rather than a “click now!” mentality. Which is great for the Daily Maverick, because it can then be as sticky as it wants to be.
