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That's not the whole story. Plentyoffish is highly profitable. Why not other social networks? Because they have a less-effective ad model but think they can spe
by aristus 18y ago
That's not the whole story. Plentyoffish is highly profitable. Why not other social networks? Because they have a less-effective ad model but think they can spend like a search engine.
A lot of people (whether or not they "get" Web2.0) have unreasonable expectations for demographic and behavioral targeting of ads. When you advertise on Google you are targeting not only a specific word, not only a specific person who is interested in that specific word, but right at the moment they are looking for it.
For this reason I believe search advertising will always be an order of magnitude more effective than demo-targeting, and at least a few times better than the loftiest pipe-dreams of behavioral targeting.
So. Your ad model is 0.1X as lucrative as search advertising, yet your infrastructure costs are comparable to a search engine. You lose. PoF wins because Markus doesn't have 100 employees.
- yummyfajitas 18y agoPoF has another advantage. If you are at PoF, you are searching for a date. PoF makes a lot of money selling ads for better dating sites, something it's users are almost already looking for.
- ajcronk 18y agoIf PoF is a launchpad to premium dating sites, how do people end up on PoF in the first place? I assumed SEO, and I searched for "dating" and "online dating" but PoF didn't rank high. Maybe they go after more niche keywords.
- charlesju 18y agoPlentyoffish makes almost no money, they made $10 M last year and they're one of the top site on the internet. You need to think relative.
- HeyLaughingBoy 18y agoIs it just me or is there something fundamentally wrong with saying that something "makes no money" and in the same breath saying "they made $10M last year" when they have only a handful (if that!) of employees? I think some people's definition of what constitutes a successful business are a tad inflated :-)
- trickjarrett 18y agoAll internet businesses get compared to Google, and that causes this inflation in terms of successful. Golfers aren't satisfied with par, they want the hole in 1, they want to be Tiger Woods even though Tiger can't always be Tiger. It's the nature of the beast.