One of Africa’s largest and fastest growing social network LAGbook on Monday launched a new advertising service brand-named Sponsored Results.
The founders behind the social network, Chidi Nwaogu and Chika Nwaogu, remark the Sponsored Results will appear above the organic result of a users’ search items.
Businesses can now use the service to redirect traffic from users searching for a specific person or firm on LAGbook, they say.
Chidi told HumanIPO that the Sponsored Search Results were launched in a move to help firms build their businesses.
“Daily, many people on LAGbook use our search to find people. We want firm’s to leverage on the Sponsored Search Results,” he said.
The Sponsored Search results will give brands the ability to purchase ads in search results thus bringing more awareness and traffic to their LAGbook contents and external website.
Advertisers target specific users can also use the app by searching certain individuals or firms on the site or on LAGbook’s pages like applications’, Blogs’, Groups’ and on firms’ external sites.
According to the founders, firms can use the Search Ads that appear on top as organic results to direct traffic to their link. The firm says it is using the service for a test Sponsored Search Result for its venture fund LAGbook Capital.
Chidi further stated that LAGbook started testing the service a week ago and has since added more features to its design. The Sponsored Results design now appears in a separate, section in the typeaheadresults.
Sponsored ads were previously seen at the bottom of the search ads but the enhancement comes in handy, as LAGbook wants its ad customers to get value for their money.
According to Chika, they’re paid marketing so they appear at the top of the search results.
“However users can opt to hide any ad by clicking on ‘x’ in the corner of the Search Ad,” he said.
Chika adds that advertisers can easily buy the Sponsored Results through LAGbook’s “Take this Spot” .
LAGbook are running steadily into profitability, they earlier on did advertising for BlackBerry Nigeria and are at the moment doing a non-monetary partnership with Dropbox.
LAGbook’s vice president for finance Josh Osemwegie said the firm is serious with its profitability.
LAGbook has been rolling out a number of advertising services like the newly launched search ads, he says, we are not only building Africa’s largest social network but a thriving Internet enterprise.
LAGbook is aimed at the youth between the ages of 18 and 30 years although according to the firm’s website, those aged 13 years and older can register.
LAGbook has over 280,000 registered members across the world and is popular in Germany, US, Turkey, Indonesia, Australia, Canada, UK, China, Romania, Israel, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Denmark, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Philippines, Mexico, France, and in Nigeria.
