Rediff – Adless homepage adds up to the loss [Quarterly Report]
Rediff Redesign, like we mentioned earlier was one of the most gutsy step by any content player – removing ads from homepage (and even otherwise) isn’t an easy decision – and the impact of removing those intrusive and non-contextual ads has resulted in 16% decline in revenues for quarter ending Sep 30, 2009.
Key numbers for quarter ending September 30th, 2009:
- Total Revenues – 4.19mn (India: 3.08, US: 1.11).
- Gross Margin: 66% (as opposed to 75% in Sep’08 qtr)
- Net Loss (before Income tax): 2.6mn (0.42mn in Sep’08 qtr) – details
Rediff Redesign Impact - Average Page view per Visitor
We earlier covered how the non-intrusive experience, combined with a ‘white’ experience has actually resulted in overall increase in pageviews (surprise! surprise!) as well as total visits to the site – signs that show long term value(?).
Rediff’s big bet has been the enablement of social activity on the site – i.e sharing with friends, usage of ‘MyPage’ and ofcourse, the overall improvement in user experience.
But beyond that, the content/product strategy doesn’t’ seem to have any significant direction. What’s your take? Do you sense a ‘solid’ strategy behind Rediff’s new avatar?
I strongly disagree by connecting the current revenue downfall to the ‘clean up’ of home page process. Revenues have fallen for most organizations in the web sector, its only that people from other media houses are able to reflect incomes of other verticals such as print/TV into their balance sheets and camouflage the recession effect.
Rediff has taken a bold step which will profit them in the medium to long term. And to put it in simpler terms, I am using Rediff more than Yahoo these days.