What’s Wrong With Advertising On WebKinz?
The recent articles talking about the consumer backlash of advertising on WebKinz was quite surprising. More so when you see so many instances of the internet moving towards an ad supported model, the best indication of which is medical journal Oncologystat moving towards an ad supported model.
As the website puts it, “Webkinz pets are lovable plush pets that each come with a unique Secret Code. With it, you enter Webkinz World where you care for your virtual pet, answer trivia, earn KinzCash, and play the best kids games on the net!”
This article in GigaOm, however has a couple of insights from WebKinz parents:
Webkinz parents largely expressed satisfaction with Ganz’s response and, by extension, its decision to start running ads. One said, “There is a limit to how much of this I am willing to buy, so if limited and tasteful advertising helps them meet their bottom line without me having to buy ungodly amounts of this stuff, it is fine with me.” And another, “[Y]es the ads told you where to go. But never ever did they try and take the littler ones out to another website. I thought that was pretty cool.”
Two things -
1. Advertising on the Internet is here to stay, and is only going to grow.
2. Relevant advertising however is extremely difficult to do, and if a site is able to do it well, it’s half the battle won. In this case WebKinz insists that the advertisements would only be for family-friendly products and that they would never offer hyperlinks directing children off the Webkinz site. If they stick with it, they may just have the cracked the holy grail of web advertising.
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Filed under: Business
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