Social media patrons have opined that advertising in Africa has risen to a considerably new level as advertisers have through different platforms, enabled online users to have access to products and services on the internet.
A check reveals that many companies and agencies today use different online advertising strategies to connect to people in search of their products and services.
Reporters have observed how companies constantly engage in the building of brands that engage consumers around the world, through publishing of interesting news on entertainment, politics, business, technology etc. or offering services like job listing, hotel listing and others.
These strategies, according to many, have continued to play dual roles as besides the provision of news and services on most platforms across Africa, one of the major interests of the content providers is to acquire massive readership and traffic in order to create visibility for its advertisers across the world.
An advertising agent when interviewed had this to say: “When an individual visits a website, it’s for a purpose. He is definitely looking for something, it’s either he wants to read some news items or he is looking for some other thing of interest. This is why most publishing companies use interesting subjects to draw readership as a large audience base is to the advantage of potential advertisers who will pay to have you serve their ads to your readers.
”Consider Buzz Nigeria News as an example, any time you visit the site buzznigeria.com, you will surely find something that will interest you as there are different sections to appeal to individual tastes. As a news website, the name “Buzz Nigeria” is catchy and that will have you clicking to see what the latest buzz in Nigeria is but that alone is really not enough as the nature of the site’s content will either keep you glued to the site or make you want to leave.
”So each time you log in and see constant updates of a variety of news, you would like to spend time checking through. This is what we, advertisers are actually looking for. We want very active and engaging websites on which to sell our products.”
But speaking with a social media user, Anthony Dede, to know what interests him most while surfing the internet, he said ” I’m an applicant, so definitely, I will always be online searching for jobs. Any site that does not provide information on jobs does not really interest me. I’m always visiting websites like joblistnigeria.com, where as a subscriber, I get a steady inflow of information on available jobs in Nigeria. To me, many people surf the internet for different purposes, but majority of Nigerian youths surf the net because they want to get a job, so job listing sites are more attractive to us. Besides, most of the job listing sites sometimes spice up their sites with trending news. This gives the site the much needed flavour for advertisers to explore. If I were an advertiser, I will patronize job listing sites more.”
While Frank Darko, a Ghanaian resident in Abuja, Nigeria said he always likes to read about his country online. According to him sites like Buzz Ghana News keep him glued to his computer each time he surfs the internet as he says there are several opportunities in Ghana at the moment, and since Nigeria is in a recession, “we must check Ghana news for better opportunities. Travelling back to Ghana is likely an option so Ghana news now interests me each time I’m online.”
Social media expert, Adoyi Ali thinks as personal interests vary, websites should be creatively packed with interesting news stories ranging from politics, entertainment, metro and other important news categories that attract massive readership. He also believes websites should try to include job listing as a category to enjoy patronage by job seekers which make up a huge percentage of Nigerian youths. He stressed the importance of precision and timely nature of news on websites adding that engaging creative content providers to boost web content was imperative.
It has been observed, however, that sensationalism has taken over the internet with most websites casting headlines that are highly sensational just to get readers or online users to click and in most cases; the readers are disappointed as what they see in the content appears totally different from what was implied or stated in the headline.
This, according to a cross section of online patrons can discourage readership and put the credibility of sites that employ such strategy to question.
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