U.S. websites struggle to capitalize on international traffic
No matter where you go in the world, you will find consumers who are familiar with American goods, trends, and services. You can order a Coca-Cola in almost any country on the planet, and advertisements for U.S. Olympic sponsors dot the streets of Beijing. Children on small Pacific islands know the words to Hannah Montana songs, and South American audiences flock to see Hollywood’s latest blockbusters dubbed in Spanish.
This widespread reach of U.S. products and advertising is true on the web as well. While visitors from all over the planet are flocking to U.S-based websites, advertisers targeting international surfers are not. According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, “Many U.S. sites now draw more than half of their audiences from international visitors but generate only about 5% of their revenue from that traffic…Web sites published by Condé Nast, such as GQ.com and Style.com, derive 55% of their traffic from overseas, while Facebook’s international audience accounts for 73% of its 124 million monthly visitors.”
This shift in the audiences on the web can be attributed both to American pop culture spreading overseas and the adoption of technology by people around the world. More and more people have access to high speed internet, especially in rapidly developing countries like Brazil, India, Russia, and China. Just as these users are watching American TV shows and listening to American music, they are visiting U.S. websites.
Advertisers have not kept up with this trend. Some websites have adopted localization techniques, displaying different versions of their site depending on the location of the user. The same cannot be said for ads, though many marketers are trying to develop automated systems for targeting ads to website visitors. The Wall Street Journal gives a good example of the problem: “A recent visit to CNET.com from Australia, for example, showed an ad for Verizon Communications Inc.’s FiOS TV service, which is available only in select U.S. cities. U.S. marketers know they aren’t reaching their intended audience with those ads, so they normally don’t pay Web publishers for them.”
As web traffic increasingly moves overseas, so will the advertising dollars. Local companies will start to see the power of the web for reaching consumers, and U.S. sites will see a dramatic upswing in foreign ad placement. While people around the world will still watch The Simpsons and listen to Jay Z, they’ll no longer be bombarded with web ads targeted only to Americans.
By Haley January Eckels
