The UK subsidiary of community site eCircle (www.eCircle-uk. com) is to post third-party advertising on its community group emails and focus on building its business user base.
With around 3.7 million people using its European sites, eCircle is to explore sponsorship opportunities and advertising for the 30 million emails its users send and receive each month.
Divided into 300 interest groups, eCircle hopes that advertisers will be attracted to the site's ability to target its defined localised users.
Jason Fisher, managing director of eCircle UK, said: 'We know what our users are interested in, so we can precisely match up advertisers.'
Although Fisher said that it had always been eCircle's intention to move to third-party advertising once a sufficient user base had been developed, he admitted that the recent adverse business climate had caused the company to focus on ASP (application service provider) opportunities.
'There is much more pressure to generate revenues from more services,' comments Fisher.
'There has been a general depression in advertising levels. It is causing us to diversify our revenue streams a little earlier.'
Scheduled to begin in January or February next year, advertising has already been incorporated into eCircle's German operations, with packages planned for its Italian, Spanish and French sites.
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