Singaporean Entrepreneurs

It is an understatement to say that the Web 2.0 Advertising World remains extremely fluid. Many companies are still trying to figure out what works- both from the advertisers and the publishers point of view. As much as many tout they are marketing gurus on the web, the fact is, no one really knows what works yet. Google’s contextual advertising has been the most successful so far but as thousands have seen (including Google itself), making your ad appear alongside a “relevant” topic is no longer the ace solution it once was.

SEVERAL REASONS FOR THE FAILURE OF CONTEXTUAL ADVERTISING

Notice the ad on the right about life insurance next to Steve Irwin’s death. This is only one of many such faux pas’ on the web. There are many more on dieting with junk food ads alongside the posts. But the more relevant problems for advertisers and publishers are these:

(1) Less and less people are clicking or even noticing those ads;
(2) Many have disabled ad blocks altogether on their browsers;
(3) Click fraud is still a problem; and
(4) Conversion to sales has been dismally low (probably due to click fraud).

Google’s purchase of Doubleclick for US$3.1 Billion signals that advertising on the web has to become much more sophisticated. (Doubleclick specializes in banners, videos, and other types of ads intended to promote brands instead of generating immediate sales via click-throughs.)

THE RISE OF ALTERNATIVES
In addition, as we’ve discussed before, there has been a steady rise of different forms of Web 2.0 advertising (vs viral marketing on social networks) such as paid reviews on blogs, 125×125 ebizcard exchanges, excruciatingly annoying audio ads and peel away ads. Now, we’re taking a look at something that has been around for a while (in internet time) and seems to be slowly but surely gaining ground: Buying “natural links” on other sites.

THE PROBLEM WITH PAID REVIEWS
While the idea of buying paid reviews to: (1) gain market mindshare and (2) gain links to rise in the search engines, seemed sound in the first 6 months, Google very quickly slapped the earning capacity of those sites/blogs down. So while paid reviews are still happening, the advertisers have changed tack completely- they’re asking people to pretend their posts are not paid posts, raising the ire (and destroying the trust) of many.

Secondly, the types of links requested by advertisers were also very difficult to put into a review naturally because they came in the form of a “keyword search”- meaning they were a string of words that you would never use naturally in conversation or written form.

Lastly, the review itself can be good or ghastly depending on the reviewer’s language ability, eliminating the first purpose (to gain mindshare).

THE CURRENT SOLUTION- BUYING “NATURAL LINKS”
With all these problems, it seems to make sense then that “keywords” that an advertiser wants that are ALREADY “naturally” in someone’s post is a better buy (to gain links to rise in the search engines) than forcing someone to write something they may know nothing about, could care less about, or have no time to seriously write about. Two of the companies that currently does this is Text Link Ads (TLA) and Tnx.net.

THE DIFFERENCES
One of the biggest differences between the two is that former pays in cash and the latter pays in points (which you can then sell for cash either to tnx.net or to other publishers). You can also earn points on tnx.net via its referral programme.

QUICK & IMMEDIATE ON TNX
While TLA takes a while before jump starting links to and from your site, tnx.net is immediate as it gives you 5,000 free points from the get go to start an advertising campaign. (But you have to get it here). You can choose links to be placed anywhere: on main pages, popular posts, or deep posts that have been around for a while and are better indexed. If you don’t want to bother going through that laborious task, you can also just choose the amount of links, its quality (based on Google’s page rank) and keywords and the system will automatically place the links for you. CAVEAT: Don’t overdo it- too many links all of a sudden will send a signal to Google that something fishy is afoot!

ADVANTAGES
While we think tnx.net has a better offer than TLA, either way, the method of buying “natural links”, we believe, is great both for advertiser and publisher. No review needs to be done. The link is natural. Ad blocking software cannot block the links. AND the keywords are a lot cheaper than buying them from Google. For the publisher, the fact that they don’t need to write something extra and they are able to sell links on every page of their site/blog is a big bonus. Also, unlike Google, publishers can choose their advertisers themselves, placing only links that are truly relevant.

As with everything on the Web, check reviews by people who have used the system to lessen the pains of your own learning curve. For further discussion on paid links and their advantages/disadvantages, go to this page.