Not necessarily, but the two sites are the furthest thing from what advertisers are looking for.
I like both sites, very different functionality. But if either web property is deemed to be a major loss for John Battelle’s Federated Media, then it’s a crazy market for sure.
Both sites have large audiences, strong brands, and definitely drive a lot of traffic out to linked stories, but they would be very weak advertising mediums for sure.
An astute reader would pause me and say: you just described Google pal, isn’t that the shiznit? No, people go to Google to search for information, get answers and find solutions to their problems. If a commercial answer/solution/web result addresses their needs, they are happy. In other words, consumers understand that on a search engine, the commercial component is as part of the mix as organic results.
But on Digg and Fark, it’s an informative and entertaining platform. The users want free content and don’t really want advertisers in the mix (the links that drive 99.9% of the traffic, we’re not talking banners alongside the text links that feature stories).
Each and every time an advertiser gets a sponsored link on Fark, the advertiser gets flamed. One men’s site recently promoted its top men’s list and Farkers said that the notion of a men’s magazine featuring a list on cool men was, well, you know what.
Who was the magazine? Here’s a hint: it ain’t Maxim, who now sells the inventory on Fark.
Any advertiser that thinks either Fark or Digg are great platform to promote their brand is insane. Why? They immediately see that the best real estate is the outgoing links, and if they tread there, they’ll get blasted!
It’s good for awareness of a new product, if all you want is to slap a banner on top of the headlines, then it works. But advertisers want something measurable, damn it isn’t that how we sell them the Web?
But the instant you try to get integration into the property, you will be hated. This is why all most of these user generated, bookmarking sites are ultimately doomed as a stand alone entity: you need content folks. I’m biased because we create content.
But I do not believe content is kind because we produce it, we create content because content is king. Digg, Fark and many others have the audience but little content. That’s their problem.
Digg and Fark have another double-edged sword they offer advertisers:
if you ever get “digged” or linked up off “Fark,” you will see a tremendous spike in traffic but the pageview to unique count will be very close to 1 to 1. That is what most sites have to say.
Advertisers try to gauge how much interaction goes on after the click: in my life as an ad sales VP, I had a major pharmaceutical cancel on us because they felt that the ratio of pageviews to clicks was too low. This was a common trend online and will continue to remain so. If that is one metric by which one would measure success, a lot of publishers are doomed, but Digg and Fark who have no content of their own might as well dig up their holes cause they’re farked.
That was too easy.
I am certainly not saying that Digg and Fark are bad places to advertise, I am saying they are tough properties to sell.
Like I said yesterday, Federated Media is probably breathing a sigh of relief - until it sees who is left on its ad roster, great sites, eclectic personalities, but rather one-dimensional when an ad buyer looks at the list. Anyway, FM is breathing a sigh of relief because Digg and Fark probably had somewhat unrealistic expectations. I’ll spare you how I know, but trust me: I know.
But don’t take it from me: Digg’s cover story on Business Week or Fark’s story on Business 2.0 and how it is going to be a million dollar profit machine does not translate into a success with advertisers, it only inflates the principals’ expectations.
You think investors are fickle, advertisers are worst. Bottom line: Losing Digg and Fark is a bigger PR loss than financial hit to FM.
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