This is a write up based on research and personal experience with acclaimed Nigeria's biggest Market place online, Jiji.ng. I believe the online classified ads placement website has been online for almost 6 years, and believe me, their concern of priority over the years they have been in existence has shown their real intentions.
I got a telemarketing call from one of their sales representative on August, trying to persuade me to purchase one of their premium advert placement on the website, but I strongly resisted the hyped pitching, due to the fact that I was not duly convinced and the only way they were able to reach me was because I uploaded ads placement on jiji website platform with my contact number...via further call disturbance I decided to give their jiji advertising platform a trial (from a professional standpoint their offer falls below expectation).
One of their sales pitch to unsuspecting customers is the fact that you will get 15 calls in general for any amount of advert placement you have on their website, a guarantee they cannot back up with any data or assurance.
Meaning you should get people viewing your ads more than the regular search impressions you might get when you list your ads, another thing is the remarkable discount they offer on their packages upto 50% in some cases, which is aimed at getting you onboard with one of their advertising packages (cars and real estate advert placement seems to be the top-notch categories).
Merits of JIJI ADVERT PLACEMENTS
You have more impressions on your ads placements
You get a special discount on the offer creating a fallacy that you are paying less for what you should be paying more for, but in real terms, jiji advert worth is below the offer you are paying for.
You get extra exposure on social media and emails newsletters (extra awareness boost) which is not measurable or noticeable by the publisher.
Finally, they promise you will get up to 15 calls a day for any amount of advert you place on their website, this is also not measurable and a simple coerce method to get unsuspected publishers.
You are allowed to upload as many adverts you can upload for a single advert placement fee, which will only increase the competition of rotational views you would have gotten from a single advert placement, even if they don't share this information, it is evident in their advert view analytic report.
You will be given 5 xTOP ads placement that allows your advert to show higher and more frequently than the jiji VIP advert placement.
Dis-Merits of JIJI ADVERT PLACEMENTS
You only get a single profile url for all your adverts which is not in correlation to the numbers of advert upload you must have made, eg you create an advert placement for 6 different categories (in order to leverage on your advert placement) your landing page for referral traffic will be a single url.
This sort of single link redirection of the advert medium can only serve good purpose for businesses that offer different services under the main category, eg you are into Construction and offer painting, kitchen wares etc this can work for a single url, but if you are into different business portfolio you may not find it conducive to utilize jiji advert offer.
There is no means to capture data, the only things jiji provides are a simple graph and analytic results for the advert placement, but you will not be able to execute any follow-up advert for your audience that has seen the advert.
Most of the contact prospects are not convert able to customers and don't surpass the lead stage of acquiring a sale after customer acquisition which is more expensive in ration to the number of inquiries you get, relating this with other advertising platforms like Google, Facebook, even Twitter, this is only pointed out the fact that advertising on JIJI does not convert better in comparison with other online media channels (even instagram accounts) paying the same amount for advert.
COMPARING JIJI ADVERT PLACEMENT VS NAIRALAND ADVERT PLACEMENT
If we are to go very low to showcase our point of poor advert placement on JIJI, then let's compare it with Nigeria's oldest forum, NairaLand. Apart from the old school feel of nairaland I believe they offer far better advert money leveraging than jiji, because they offer a fixed price for all categories and you only get charged for clicks unlike impression by jiji.
Using Nairaland for advert placements allows you to also upload as many advert banners (verse advert post by jiji) to generate click-throughs to your designated landing page.
Nairaland has an engaging audience on each category placement why it is a forum platform, unlike a microblogging platform.
Nairaland is far cheaper in advert cost and result oriented, although their advertising report is very poor unlike jiji advert report (which is still below standard).
One should expect more information to be generated in terms of advert target audience so as to help publishers target this audience in their locations, for instance, if jiji advert report shows the geo-location a user views the advert from you can easily see from the report that more audience from a particular state views your published ad and you can target this location by changing STATE in your advert profile.
CONCLUSION
Jiji advert placements is a simple classified advert platform, and as such you are basically paying for impressions and should be aware that their advert analytic report is not well detailed that showcase all the necessary parameters for you to make insightful decisions.
Jiji advert placement should only be subjected for building awareness and not suitable for businesses that want to generate sales, jiji is not an advert placement rather should be a directory listing platform, comparing it with other advert placement mediums, even with their close to sleek web design they are not well structured for adverts and should not take up the mantle of advertising platform.
Jiji classified advert website is only suitable for big gain businesses and not for small gain businesses, for instance, you make a payment of #16,000.00 for one of their packages and your gain on the product is #5000 you will end up spending your profit on your advert, because you will need to sell over your investment profit benchmark to call in a profit; ie #32,000 minimum, due to poor targeted audience and monthly impression-based rotational ads (Remember your ads are competing with others with the only advantage being the amount you pay for more rotation or higher placement, and technical clickbait titles and descriptions of your advert).
Jiji should focus on working on a publisher admin dashboard that will envisage the use of targetting the right audience for their businesses and being able to follow up on conversion, this will reduce the extra cost of acquiring the customer via phone call.
I am a seo web analyst and have a love for anything online marketing. Have been able to perform researches using the built up internet marketing tool; seo web analyst as a case study and will be using the web marketing tool (platform).
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