Why They Are Not Advertising Online
March 26th, 2007 by JonVery few bricks-and-mortar businesses are convinced of the effectiveness of advertising online (yet?) in country’s local sites. They still prefer traditional media (e.g. newspapers, billboards, radio, etc.), and they have valid reasons whether we like it or not. There are a lot of variables but the core reasons are the following:
Ads limited room for creativity. With limited pixels in a webpage, web designers are almost helpless to create a banner ad that will get readers attention without annoying them. In desperations, some put their ads in the middle of the article to get attention, not really a great user experience.
Readers are too broad to target. Top sites like, inquirer.net, mb.com.ph, pinoyexchange.com, and yehey.com, big slice of their users are Filipinos outside the Philippines. So you will notice the ads in inquirer are more of on real estate, remittances, and online businesses advertisers. According to their site, only 33.13% are coming from the Philippines. Check their stats here. Advertising to them may be good for international branding though.
So far, local city guide clickthecity.com and other niche sites like weddingsatwork.com can deliver eyeballs more effectively than bigger players. Advertising in adwords is still too technical for local business owners.
Ads blindness. This is a fact, the more a person exposed to banner ads or text based ads (e.g. adsense, ypn), it increases its ad blindness. That’s why savvy users will not click these. This is a serious case for the forum sites like, pinoyexchange.
Small number of Filipino Internet users. Users from our country is relatively small compare to progressive asian neighbors, like Singapore. In 2005, Singapore has 66.3% of its population using the Internet while we got 9.0% (source: Internet World Stats). In addition, there is no reliable source to get more accurate guesstimate figure of active Internet users in the Philippines.
There are other reasons that may not be listed and I guess it’s a long way to go before my favorite lugawan sa kanto will advertise online. 
Hi. My name is Jon Orana, an Internet marketing consultant and an entrepreneur. I’m now blogging to give free information, strategies, and advice to small business owners on how can they leverage their website to get new customers, strengthen customer retention, and increase their sales. 