A recent New York Times article on web growth in developing countries discusses a situation we see all too often here at Pure Visibility: an increase in web use of U.S. based technologies and products from developing countries, without an equal increase in revenue for the hosting companies.

The ‘International Paradox’, as the Times calls this phenomena, is eating up US resources especially in the case of social / user-generated content sites like YouTube and Flickr, where developing countries eat up bandwidth without giving much in return, for example, in terms of generating revenue through the paid advertising placed on such sites.

We regularly see this phenomena at Pure Visibility – in fact, the majority of our clients, who happen to include many manufacturers of expensive specialty products / equipment, see countries like India in the top couple geographic areas sending traffic to their site. Most of our clients, though, do business primarily in the U.S.

Flashbacks to Economics – what we’re observing is the Pareto Principle at work: the harsh reality of the fact that it is not uncommon to see 80% of the effects of an event coming from only 20% of the causes. This is just one more Power Law at work in the internet world, just like the ‘long tail’ of query traffic volume for most sites and the traffic by page distribution of your average website’s traffic. In this case, it’s probably based in part on the Principle of Least Effort, if we consider that online entertainment might be the easiest and cheapest alternative for those using it.

So, as companies with paid search accounts to run, should we turn off advertising to developing countries across the board? If we really buy Sturgeon’s Law (‘Ninety percent of everything is crap’), this seems to be the only option that makes sense. But could this be just a hasty and pessimistic solution that might preclude seeing the brighter side? Is there anyway for advertisers to leverage the boost in traffic, somehow?

Getting the traffic interested in conversing about your products and services might work, in some markets, such as the technically-dominated ones. Social media is all about starting conversation, regardless of who’s involved. More discussion linking back to your site is never a bad thing, as it may also attract new visitors.

Beyond that, we’re left to only comment on a somewhat troubling reality.