The flu bug keeps me up and I can’t sleep even though I am having a splitting headache. So while I should be resting and hope I get better, here I am reading blogs and I saw Bobo’s reply to Nuffnang’s comment on her blog. The following excerpts of Nuffnang’s comment was taken from Bobo’s post.

Several hundred cheques going on any single day! I’ll want to find out if the expense management people in my office issue that many cheques a day too… for all that payments and what not. Since there are two of them handling cheques so there must be a lot more to handle a day. If not, the two nice ladies will have to start worrying about how long they can keep their jobs!

Excerpt 2

As to the allocation of advertisements, i have to say Nuffnang plays no part in deciding which advertisements go onto which blogs. The final decision lies with the advertiser’s choice. We can recommend but if they do not want to, we can’t do anything about it. Also, bear in mind, not all blogs are suitable for all advertisements, Nike may be suitable for blogs that touches on sports and others like Starbucks may be suitable for food blogs.

That sounds like an explanation to the question on why people aren’t getting ads though I remain skeptical as I am not quite convinced that an advertiser would actually participate so actively in the decision making.

It would be nice if Nuffnang back up their assertion by showing some statistics to those who have signed up for their services just how often their blogs were recommended and on what grounds they are rejected by an advertiser. (I am not asking for these to be made public and I don’t want to know. But at least the bloggers who signed up have a right to know.)

Anyway, as to why I remain skeptical… I had wondered just how many bloggers who signed up, blog specifically on certain matters? I am not saying that topic-specific blogs do not exists, but simply saying, just how many of theare out there? And I must ask, if I am reading a food blog now, who can say I am actually not interested in looking for an air-ticket, or thinking about a new pair of track shoes? Above which, if these blogs are so popular, why should an advertiser go through Nuffnang at all? Why not just sponsor the blog directly like some have did with Xiasuay? Wouldn’t that be a more effective way to spend their money?

Furthermore, I am really wondering which advertisers have committed manpower to actively make the decision on which blogs their ads go to when they advertises with Nuffnang. In fact, if you are an advertiser, would you tend to limit your audience to only a specific group of people? With such a difficult – or unwieldy – business model, I am actually quite impressed that Nuffnang has gone as far as becoming the ‘No. 1 blog advertising firm in South East Asia’ … or something to that effect.

Wow. So is Nuffnang accusing the others of not being honest now? Is Nuffnang suggesting that its competitors are not being honest? In fact, it appears that not just its competitors are now accused of dishonesty, all advertising companies are implicated. Does Nuffnang know something we don’t? If Nuffnang has evidence why doesn’t it produce them for the good of bloggers and blogosphere, and in fact, also for the general public?

Is Nuffnang suggesting that those with negative comments about them are from people with the specific agenda to see them destroyed? But what’s the point of saying so unless they have evidence? Nuffnang should really just simply fix their own public image and leave no room for the negative comments to ferment.

Addendum

According to Bobo’s post here, she had a call from Timothy Tiah and he explained to her that this post was not written by anyone under the employment or associated with Nuffnang.

Whoever did this… shame on you!!