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The Full Page Ad Syndrome

Yahoo! took over the entire front page of the Times of India on Oct. 4 for its new ad campaign. Back in 2000, another internet portal tried the same gimmick:

… there was absolutely nothing new about what Indya.com offered. Anything that they had, people like Rediff, Sify, IndiaInfo, IndiaTimes, [insert favourite portal here] already did… Their very expensive advertising talked of their “attitude”, but this didn’t affect the content at all, which was pedestrian. They offered different colour schemes for their site, which was about all that was “new”. So, yes, the Times ad got people to their site, but there was nothing to keep them coming back; and certainly nothing to make people switch from their favourite site.

The story ended disastrously:

Indya.com had hired over 220 people since April 2000. In July, they fired 20% of them. Apparently, their profitability maths still didn’t work out, so in August, they fired another 35%. Oh, the things you have to do to save money. If only they had saved a bit of money from their wasteful advertising, it would have paid the salaries of some of these poor employees. And now, 80% more have “quit”…

(via Shamanth)


October 6, 2009 ·  Post to Twitter ·  Email this ·  Uncategorized ·  Comments Off


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