Dada.net, the Italian-based social networking and mobile community services provider, has announced that it will be partnering with Google's AdSense service to launch a new scheme that offers bloggers and social network users a way to earn money from their own content. Dada.net claims that the scheme, called 'Friend$', will utilise Google's AdSense and the viral nature of social networks and user-generated content by enabling ads to appear not only on blogs, but also across the profiles of consumers' social networking pages. Consumers are invited to opt-in to the programme in order to enable the placement of text and display ads on their blogs, profiles and alongside photos and videos.
Max Pellegrini, CEO of Dada USA said:
"The really new thing is the viral aspect... If you invite your friends to participate in this programme, you can make money on the clicks and on the pages of your friends. You're incentivized to invite your friends."
According to Pellegrini, the incentive for social networking users is the facility to make money not only on their own clicks, but also from clicks made via friends' pages. So people can not only earn from click-throughs via the ads that appear on their own pages, but also on click-throughs generated via ads that appear on the pages of friends they've invited. Users who receive an invitation from a member of the 'Friend$' scheme simply have to click on a link to opt-in, then wait for approval from Google.
While Google supplies the ads and manages the inventory, Dada will manage the pages on which the Google ads appear, as well as the relationship between 'member friend$' on the Dada.net platform. Google's AdSense has previously been most commonly associated with publishers and businesses, and the move to allow the placement of ads by individual people seems a rather unique one. It implies that with heightened levels of web traffic, the likelihood of someone clicking on an ad will increase.
Although social network providers recognise the potential revenues that might be generated through their sites, profiles and blogs, they are struggling to work out the best methods of monetizing millions of pages of user-generated content. While it makes sense to tap into revenue possibilities through individual profiles and blogs, some analysts have questioned the meaningfulness of the scheme and the value it represents to prospective members of the plan.
Debra Aho Williamson, a senior analyst at eMarketer said:
"You've got to be pretty popular and have a whole lot of friends to make any significant money from this... It sounds to me like a really interesting idea, but I wonder how big the revenue potential is both for the individual and Dada."
Dada launched the 'Friend$' scheme in Italy, before extending it to the US, and plan to further expand the scheme towards users in Spain, Portugal and Brazil in the near future. The site has more than seven million users world-wide and considers itself an online social networking platform for blogging, dating, mobile communication and entertainment.
