TribalFusion Not Embracing Forums (Web 2.0?)

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In a drastic move aimed at pleasing big budget advertisers, TribalFusion will begin offering advertisers the choice to block publishers with forums. TribalFusion is one of the largest advertising networks on the web. In an email from the company, account executives are requesting forum owners tag ads in their forums separately from non-forum content. Sites with forums have been identified and will be blocked entirely by larger advertisers beginning August 15, 2007. Only ads with the special tag will still run on forum sites blocked by advertisers.

Is this the end of CPM advertising on user-generated content sites? Will this include web 2.0 sites with user submitted content and comments? TribalFusion cites the unmoderated nature of forums as the reason, however, I highly doubt that’s the case. From an advertisers perspective, forums have notoriously low CTRs. Why not just come out and ask publishers to frequency cap forums. Or to pull sites out of the network with questionable or possibly questionable content.

I think this will have long reaching effects for TribalFusion. They built their reputation on accepting high quality sites, many of which have large forums, and having above average pay outs. Personally, my payouts have slowly declined over the past several months and with this latest change I think it’s time for another company to step up and take the reigns for forum owners. Forums may not be the best place to advertise, but with the right targetting and frequency capping they can provide an excellent ROI for advertisers, especially for branding campaigns.

In the mean time, if I may offer some suggestions for those publishers effected by this change. Now is the best time to step up your in house advertising efforts. Start going after those companies in your niche and show them the value of advertising on a forum. Work out deals with your second tier providers and let them know you’ll be sending more traffic their way. It may be time to sign an exclusive deal with a second tier provider to get a better CPM. And if this is going to completely kill your income, it’s time to start diversifying. You should have done this a long time ago, now you have no choice.

Posted in Forum Building, Web 2.0, Industry News, Monetization | 4 Comments »