Rajesh Jain points out a very relevant point of view in his latest post, that the Indian market is probably not yet ready for Advertisement Revenue Based Online products.
I had arrived at a similar conclusion based on a very limited self-survey. I went on to ask many of my friends who used Gmail as to how many of them clicked the Ads that appeared beside their mail in the Gmail window. Most of them didn't even notice the Ads and not even a single person said that they clicked those Ads - however going by the revenue that Google gets out of Gmail, it seems that this is not the case with Americans or Britons.
The India consumer is culturally not very receptive towards advertisements; add to it the small size of the broadband user-base in India, cultural reluctance to commit online payments and ignorance of lots of users - clearly creating a business based purely on a Ad based revenue model can turn out to be disastrous in Indian Cyberspace.
However, companies like rediff, Sify and Indiatimes which sell a range of services and gain most by cross-selling them have a robust system for survival. Any new venture too must probably look for a 'non-Ad based' revenue model before launching its services.
I had arrived at a similar conclusion based on a very limited self-survey. I went on to ask many of my friends who used Gmail as to how many of them clicked the Ads that appeared beside their mail in the Gmail window. Most of them didn't even notice the Ads and not even a single person said that they clicked those Ads - however going by the revenue that Google gets out of Gmail, it seems that this is not the case with Americans or Britons.
The India consumer is culturally not very receptive towards advertisements; add to it the small size of the broadband user-base in India, cultural reluctance to commit online payments and ignorance of lots of users - clearly creating a business based purely on a Ad based revenue model can turn out to be disastrous in Indian Cyberspace.
However, companies like rediff, Sify and Indiatimes which sell a range of services and gain most by cross-selling them have a robust system for survival. Any new venture too must probably look for a 'non-Ad based' revenue model before launching its services.
well well well ...
ReplyDeleteso now we need to think of an alternate revenue model for pure community service offering also ...
;)