To Bubble Or Not To Bubble …
The most interesting part (for me) of an interview with Mahesh Murthy on MicroHoo day was about ads on Facebook in particular and social networks in general. From the (rough) transcript of the interview is Mahesh’s response to my question on whether the page view economics of Web 2.0 will scale infinitely:
“I really do not think so. Facebook is the kind of environment, which is very immersive for the viewer. The viewer does not want to click on an ad and get away somewhere else. In Google, as a search engine, you have to go and click on an ad and leave the website. So, as a result the predominant paradigm in the business is click on the ad and get away from the site.
We have run lots of ads in Facebook for a dozen of clients. We find that they work on a branding level. They give you impressions and eyeballs. But you don’t get those clicks through rates. You get that by doing the regular contextual advertising on Google.”
This observation from basically the head of India’s biggest search marketing firm, seems totally in line with these observations (published a day prior to the interview). Money quote: “Fuck, this is a pyramid scheme. There is no money input into this system except venture capital. I remember a time, long long ago, when tech companies spent their own venture capital on each other, so revenues were all booked from the same small pool of money. Yeah, as I recall, it didn’t end well.”
But before you start humming to the brilliant Bu-bu-bu, Bu-bu, Bubble video below, do read this rather spirited defence from SuperCIO.
Tags: bubble, facebook, jp ranga, mahesh murthy, search, social networking, Startups
February 24th, 2008 at 6:04 am
Hey Abhi,
Great to find you on my blog, and thanks for your comments.
To quickly answer your question, I don’t think operators have the might or know-how to build an adsense/panama kind of platform independetly.
However as a body of operators they may succeed in doing just that.
More interestingly, internet companies like Yahoo or Google, VAS companies like OnMobile and even Handset manufacturers like NOKIA have plans (or have already started)to start their own ad networks.
So, it seems like the operators may just play the role of a distributer for some time to come, and to tell you the truth…my experience says it’s a long way for the operators to start understanding the internet game or for that matter even the new age digital content and advertising game.
Please keep coming back, say my hi to Varun (we worked together at Digit/Chip)
April 17th, 2008 at 5:47 am
i lov the vid y didnt i think of this just love it