Nairaland: Now directly selling adverts

I happened to take a visit today to one Nigerian website which I respect a lot and has been in the industry for quite some time. I'm talking of Nairaland(since 2005).

"Enter Ads by Nairaland".

Yes, Nairaland now sells ads! I guess, it's about time for this as it seems the online advertising model dominated by big time networks is no longer that attractive and perhaps the best way to go is by direct ad selling.

It seems most Nigerian companies are willing to spend a flat fee on advertising rather than pay based on clicks or impressions and this may be the model which Seun would be willing to take to monetize his hugely popular Nigerian forum.

Nairaland is a broad website and online discussion forum for Nigerians and it has grown to become the number one website in Nigeria. Nairaland has undergone a couple of developments over the years and has both a mobile and full desktop display versions.

In the past, Google adwords has been the main source of advertising displayed on the website and this was based on a Pay Per click and CPM income model for publishers. Recently however, I no longer see ads by Google on Nairaland as this has been overtaken by small boxes which says "Advertise on Nairaland".

With the recent advertising changes done on Nairaland, it now means that advertisers would be able to directly place their ads on Nairaland without having to go through a third party like Google adwords. Also it probably means that local advertisers in Nigeria and beyond would be able to pay in naira.

Will Nairaland be able to survive without the Google option? Well I guess she can when we know that more Nigerian websites and blogs are already making a good income(running into millions monthly) by selling direct adverts to local companies. This is the turning point for Nairaland and may change the face of content publishing and advertising in Nigeria's web industry.

What Nairaland would need to succeed with its new advertising and business model would probably be more of local marketing and getting contracts from related companies that need traffic to their business.