Fusu has asked 23 Romanian bloggers to associate their web sites with his Neogen company.
The move is part of the company’s new expansion strategy, following Neogen’s announcement earlier this year that it would associate with publisher Media Pro Interactive to provide premium content to its users. Media Pro Interactive is part of the Media Pro Trust, owner of the ProTV station and several online and print publications. “We intend to develop solutions to sell advertising for content producers, similar to Adsense (Ed.n.: web site identification service for its subscribers, providing online advertising opportunities, based on the content of web sites), currently provided by Google,” Fusu told Business Standard.
Neogen has some 800,000 visitors per week and some 100 million hits per month. Fusu forecasts some 1,200,000 weekly visitors and 150 million hits per month by the end of the year. Of the 23 bloggers targeted by Neogen, four have a total 10,000 visitors per day. A link to Neogen is to be posted on their web sites and each internet user accessing the portal from their sites will earn bloggers 20 cents. To date, no blogger has either agreed to or refused Fusu’s proposal.
With this move, Neogen hopes to significantly increase its web traffic and thus raise its revenues from advertising. According to a recent statement by Fusu, the portal targets an important portion of the online advertising market, estimated at some €8 million in 2007. Neogen has more than 1.3 million registered users in Romania and a further 550,000 users in Bulgaria and Serbia. It posted net sales exceeding €1.2 million in 2006.
