Richard Deane, Business Writer

Jamaican dot.com entrepreneurs say that local marketers continue to ignore their websites as a source of advertising and continue to funnel most of their business to traditional media, notwithstanding the substantial rise in Internet traffic.

More than 1.2 million Jamaicans are now estimated to have access to the Web.

Jamie Ranston, the operator of Idletribe.com, a social-networking site that has about 15,000 members, says that advertising agencies continue to focus on television, radio and the press to get their messages out.

The Advertising Association of Jamaica estimates that in 2007, the advertising industry was valued at $5 billion.

But traditional advertising houses have locked up the market, said new media aspirants.

No 'new blood'

"There is not a lot of new blood in the advertising industry because it's an old boys' club, so you find that anyone who is trying to change it won't get that far," Ranston said

Ingrid Riley of CaribClix, a Caribbean Internet advertising network in the business of connecting advertisers looking for publicity with websites looking for advertising revenue, says that with the exception of a few dedicated companies, it has been an uphill struggle convincing some Jamaican advertisers that Web ads are worth their while.

"What is happening in Jamaica and the Caribbean is that more people are spending more time online and less time watching the TV and reading the newspaper and listening to the radio," Riley said.

"I'm not saying that they are the bad guys, but they should have been here five years ago."

Travis MacMillan, a marketing consultant, admits that advertising agencies are not always eager to include local websites in their marketing communication plans.

Marketing agencies wanting to target a mass audience consider themselves better off spending their money through media that have mass appeal, such as newspapers, television shows and radio programmes.

Marketing dollar

"It's too small a market to contribute the marketing dollar to," MacMillan said of Web businesses.

According to the International Telecommunications Union, in 2007, roughly about five out of every 10 Jamaicans had regular access to the Internet.

But MacMillan says that most Jamaican Internet users consume foreign websites such as Yahoo.com and Facebook.com, while traffic on Jamaican sites was limited and generally confined to interest groups.

"At the end of the day, what are you going on? You're not going on to a Jamaican website," MacMillan said of users. "Maybe the diaspora would, but we are not advertising to the diaspora."

According to Facebook.com figures, the social-networking site has about 42,000 members registered on its Jamaican network.

Idletribe.com, which operates a similar service to Facebook, has just over 15,000 members.

Ranston says that with the large number of Jamaicans with Facebook accounts, it was surprising that advertisers were not using the medium to reach Jamaican consumers.

It shows, he said, that the industry does not value the Internet as a serious marketing tool.

Facebook currently has a programme that allows business owners to build web pages for their products and services.

"One thing that I was really shook up by was that I thought that advertisers would have been all over something like Facebook," Ranston said.

"It seems like who has been all over Facebook are the promoters of sessions and parties."

Despite the lack of support from advertising agencies, local website owners say that their business model in the Jamaican context is still a lucrative venture. Sandor Panton, the operator of top5jamaica.com, says he uses three revenue streams to capture his profits: 'cost per click'; 'cost per impression'; (CPM); and also 'direct ad sales'.

Direct ad sales, Panton told Sunday Business, relates to a patch of space on a website that is sold directly to companies for a predetermined sum of money.

Top5jamaica.com's lowest rate, he said, is US$40 or its equivalent.

"Direct ad sales are just great because this is just sure money every month," said Panton.

Under the CPM method, which, he says, works best for highly trafficked site, a company is billed for every 1,000 views of the page on which the ad is placed.

Cost per click is derived from Google's Adsense programme that allows website operators to carry Google ads on their sites.

"Every time somebody clicks one of your ads - which means the Google ad on your page - you get paid," Panton said.

richard.deane@gleanerjm.com