A significant revenue gap exists between Pakistani and U.S. websites. Despite similar audience sizes, Pakistani sites earn 32 times less than their American counterparts. This gap has persisted for over 15 years, making it difficult for Pakistani digital media companies to sustain their operations.
Websites make money by showing ads. For example, TechX Pakistan shows lots of banner ads managed by Google. They get money based on how many ads are shown each month.
For Pakistani users, each ad view brings very little revenue. Pakistanis get less than 10 cents for every 1,000 times an ad is shown. So, if a webpage has five ads, it might only make about 10 cents for every 1,000 times people see those ads. But if the same ads are shown to people in the U.S., the website can make more than $2 for every 1,000 views.
TechX Pakistan gets most of its visitors from inside Pakistan. Because of this, we don’t earn much money overall. Many other media companies like Express Group, ProPakistani, Jang Group, UrduPoint, HamariWeb, and PakWheels have the same problem.
Pakistani websites make less money from ads, and this has been a problem since the internet started in Pakistan. Recently, things have gotten even worse. Google doesn’t have enough ads to show to Pakistani people, so many ad spaces on websites stay empty.
Sluggish Economy Drains Pakistani Ad Revenue
When there are no ads, websites make no money. About 70% of ads on Pakistani websites are not used. This means only 30% of ads can make money, but they don’t pay much.
It’s very unusual to have so many ads not used—up to 70% in some cases, and even 80% for Urdu content. The economy is slow, and companies have less money for ads. There is no quick fix for this problem.
In places like India and the Middle East, they don’t have as many unused ads. This is a big problem only in Pakistan. One idea is to sell ads directly to local companies instead of using Google. But not many local companies want ads right now.
This tough situation is why there are so few new websites starting up. Most need a lot of money to begin. This hurts the whole digital publishing business in Pakistan. Things need to change for the business to do well.
To read our blog on “Twitter will allow publishers to charge per article, Musk,” click here.