Lesley Stones
24 October 2008
Johannesburg — SOUTH African directory inquiries company Brabys has become the first company in Africa to be appointed as an authorised reseller of Google AdWords.
AdWords are online advertisements that display when people run a Google search for specific products and services, so businesses can target people with a definite interest in that product.
Brabys runs the Ananzi.co.za search engine for South African pages. Director Mark Buwalda said this was a significant deal as it meant small businesses could now afford to advertise on some of the best sites in the country, as well as on Google.
Brabys staff, who place adverts on behalf of clients, will be trained on the AdWords program, and will set up and manage accounts to make sure advertisers get the optimum results for their money as they target new customers across the country.
Buwalda did not say how much extra cash the deal could generate, but said he would hire more staff to capitalise on the expected growth in advertising sales.
"This alliance will expose many more businesses to the economic opportunities that the internet offers," Google SA's manager, Stafford Masie, said.
"This is a first on the continent and we are very enthusiastic about what this means for every small business."
Google already claims 90% of the market for search engine traffic in SA and earns 98% of all pay-per-click search advertising revenue.
But its behaviour has already upset one local company it deals with, resulting in an investigation by the Competition Commission. The commission is assessing whether Google is abusing its dominance and flouting the Competition Act by trying to steal a customer from Entelligence, an e-marketing company that places AdWords on behalf of its clients.
Entelligence has a contract to promote Telkom's Yellow Pages website, partly by displaying adverts that click through to Yellow Pages when users run a Google search. Entelligence pays Google 60c when a user clicks on an advert, and recovers the fee from Yellow Pages.
MD Sean Riley said Google suddenly hiked the click rate from 60c to R2, making it more expensive for Entelligence to promote Yellow Pages. Google then tried to persuade Yellow Pages to cancel its contract and deal with Google directly.
Google also cancelled credit accounts for Entelligence, so it could no longer run Yellow Pages adverts on Google's site. Riley said that was devastating as Yellow Pages was a key customer. Google says the accusations are without merit.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2008 Business Day. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
