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Google and Facebook for a start. If you build something people want and use, in the scale of national TV audience, then you will be able to monetize. If you h

Google and Facebook for a start. If you build something people want and use, in the scale of national TV audience, then you will be able to monetize. If you have a great product for a niche, then double-check your unit economics before you start.

jonnathanson 15y ago
It needs to be said that Google and Facebook are perfect, no-brainer advertising platforms. Mass audiences + natural use behaviors that can be monetized via ads + user analytics and segmentation capabilities = beaucoup advertiser bucks. But it's a mistake to look at a typical startup and assume there's some sort of magical "monetization switch" that can be flipped when sufficient scale is achieved. If your platform isn't a natural fit for advertising, or for other forms of monetization, then monetizing is anything but easy. Scale isn't sufficient. It's necessary in a lot of cases, but in and of itself, it doesn't guarantee anything.
- zackattack 15y ago
  I'm having a hard time coming up with a case where a platform /product achieved scale (in the age of modern advertising), yet couldn't monetize. Which ones can you think of?
  - webwright 15y ago
    Foxmarks/Xmarks and Delicious come to mind.
- webwright 15y ago
  "It needs to be said that Google and Facebook are perfect, no-brainer advertising platforms." Hindsight! When Google came to being, search engines were not so obvious. They relied on banner ads (declining CPMs). Overture was experimenting with the PPC model, but it wasn't remotely mainstream. Facebook as well. Many people claimed that Facebook could never turn a profit with advertising. Users had no purchasing intent, suffered from ad blindness, etc. To some degree, they were right-- clickthru rates on FB are pretty awful-- but with 700M+ active users, it really doesn't matter. It was decidedly non-obvious that Facebook would be a gaming platform.

jonnathanson 15y ago

It needs to be said that Google and Facebook are perfect, no-brainer advertising platforms. Mass audiences + natural use behaviors that can be monetized via ads + user analytics and segmentation capabilities = beaucoup advertiser bucks. But it's a mistake to look at a typical startup and assume there's some sort of magical "monetization switch" that can be flipped when sufficient scale is achieved. If your platform isn't a natural fit for advertising, or for other forms of monetization, then monetizing is anything but easy. Scale isn't sufficient. It's necessary in a lot of cases, but in and of itself, it doesn't guarantee anything.

zackattack 15y ago
I'm having a hard time coming up with a case where a platform /product achieved scale (in the age of modern advertising), yet couldn't monetize. Which ones can you think of?
- webwright 15y ago
  Foxmarks/Xmarks and Delicious come to mind.
webwright 15y ago
"It needs to be said that Google and Facebook are perfect, no-brainer advertising platforms." Hindsight! When Google came to being, search engines were not so obvious. They relied on banner ads (declining CPMs). Overture was experimenting with the PPC model, but it wasn't remotely mainstream. Facebook as well. Many people claimed that Facebook could never turn a profit with advertising. Users had no purchasing intent, suffered from ad blindness, etc. To some degree, they were right-- clickthru rates on FB are pretty awful-- but with 700M+ active users, it really doesn't matter. It was decidedly non-obvious that Facebook would be a gaming platform.