India Media Houses and Online Advertising – in Medieval Times still!

As a small website owner, one thing always intrigues me about Indian News paper sites.  They seem to have a proliferation of Google Ads and affiliate ads.  That doesn’t seem to be right!  Why would I want to see the ad of Capella University on an Anna Hazare related news item?

While these ads are a nuisance, but what is most important here is that this points to utter lack of Advertising pipeline for online assets in case of major media houses.  These media houses are the main owners of most advertising channels.  Yet, they cannot garner any worthwhile advertising for their websites?

The result is that we are bombarded with pop ups, irritating full screen ads etc.  That is the level of lack of imagination and work effort on part of the e-media team for these media houses.

Honestly, the online adversting potential for Indian companies has not been completely tapped.  I don’t have much figures, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the ad wallet’s portion for online advertising is less than 5% on average for Indian businesses.  Which given the online presence of NRIs and educated Indians is a very sad comment!

In US, the dollars going for online ads has increased quite a lot over the years.  New paradigms are coming in.  Even more importantly, some companies have even made their Facebook or the YouTube page as their main corporate site!  Given those kind of changes in thinking, Indian counterparts are years behind.  And Media Houses are also in the old world.