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Where Africa and Technology Collide!

Adgator: An African Blogger’s Ad Network

Justin Hartman and the guys at Afrigator are at it again. I’ve wondered for a very long time why no one had created an ad network for African bloggers, thinking that there surely must be someone out there who wanted to advertise on some African blogs.

adgator

Adgator is here to ask that same question, and prove it out. Make sure you read Justin’s post on the new platform.

Afrigator recently had a sizeable stake acquired by MIH Print Africa, a division of Naspers Limited. This gives them more money to work with, and more credibility. This also means that they have a sizable sales team at their disposal, which is one of the biggest issues when doing an ad network.

Before you run off to Adgator and sign up, here are a couple things you should know:

  • It’s a 50% revenue split with Adgator.
  • You get paid on a CPM basis, so you had better have a good deal of traffic to make money.

Questions

I had a couple questions for Justin regarding Adgator, and he was kind enough to reply with some answers. Here is our dialogue:

How do bloggers outside of South Africa get paid?

At this stage we’re only piloting the program in South Africa. We need to test the viability of the program in the country where Afrigator’s largest base lies and if we can make it work here then we’ll take what we’ve learned into other African countries. When we do, we’ll most likely setup our own bank accounts in those countries so that we can facilitate the payment process from within those regions. One of the core issues we’ve always struggled with in the Adgator idea is the payment one and we realise that paying people from SA simply won’t work.

Are you mainly focused on South Africa right now?

Yes – we’re only SA for now. I’m hoping to roll this out to Kenya and Nigeria by March 2009.

I know you have a sales team, how much of those sales are done outside of South Africa?

None at this stage and herein lies the problem. Because we have little resources in other African countries it makes Adgator even more difficult to implement outside of SA. However, through our efforts with Afrigator we are working on overcoming this issue and establishing ourselves in our larger African countries.

How many advertiser are already lined up?

This is without doubt the most difficult aspect of the job as advertisers need to be educated in this process. That said it looks like we’ve got between two and four advertisers depending on how the final negotiations go.

7 Comments

  1. What a no-brainer. Really hope this works out. This should be a shoe-in. They’ve got the brand already there, now it’s mostly a matter of getting some advertisers lined up. Are most bloggers who are doing ads right now using Google? What’s the advantage to changing over to Adgator?

  2. No, no. The biggest job isn’t getting the advertisers. They will come where the audience is – don’t you worry about that. The biggest problem with blogging in South Africa (and I guess in the whole Africa) is that there simply are no page views. No audience. At this stage, no blogger in SA (well, maybe one or two), can expect to earn more than a few rand (my guess between R30 and R100) per month from running a blog.

    So, Adgator is far from a “no-brainer”, as Taylor suggested above. At least, not in the next 3 – 5 years…

    To share on a 50:50 basis under these circumstances, is way off the mark. To get the virtuous circle going of bigger audience, more and better blogs, more advertising income, bigger salaries for bloggers, more and better blogs etc…the phenomenon will need a financial push. I’m thinking of a financial injection into blogging by Naspers, in the form of a small basic monthly salary (very small), plus all the ad revenue income. This to selected bloggers. And for a predefined period.

    Otherwise, the blogging scene and Adgator won’t get off the ground.

  3. But, now I have to think this thing through…otherwise the ideas in my previous comment hang in the air: If I was Naspers I would not spend money to grow the blogger audience. Why spend money to move the audience I ALREADY have on my websites (where advertisers pay steep rates) to blogs (where advertisers will by peanut rates)? Not only would that NOT make financial sense for Naspers, it would also amount to “canabilisation” of existing, successful Naspers websites.

    So, SA’s blogging scene will always be a “rand-aktiwiteit” with no financial viability. (I deliberately hold back on a view of Adgator, but suggest Naspers look at a business model such as the one at http://www.klatcher.com.)

  4. @Taylor – You’re right on with Google Ads being their greatest competition. They have to prove that it’s more profitable and at least as easy as setting up with Google to make this work.

  5. @Christo – I think my thoughts on audience we’re assuming a much larger install base, not just blogs, but any African web site (traditional news, etc.) that might want online advertising. The blog world is simply one kind of site where adgator could be used. Am I missing anything here? I’m sure there are African bases businesses using things like Google already, so how do we get them to use adgator instead or in addition to?

  6. Hi Taylor,

    Oh, yes. I didn’t think about the “wider audience”. That could help Adgator. But, on the topic of Adgator’s business model: I really think it should not only be an “ad server”. As a second leg, it should also enable bloggers (and the “wider audience”) to easily turn some (or all) of their content into paid content on their sites. So, to make content a second source of income – for both blogger and Adgator. Here one must look at what http://www.klatscher.com has done. There is a guy taking the widest possible angle at income-generation – for his own benefit, as well as his bloggers’.

  7. wwe love the fact that the people at Afrigator keep on evolving and growing, they are an inspiration

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