I watched the Mixergy thing and read these notes, and have read other stuff about this guy. I was in Silicon Valley when he built and sold his startups. At the time, I did not understand what his startups did, and I still do not understand how ad startups like this work or make money. I especially don't know why they make $300M instead of $3M or even $3000. How does the product work? How is it sold? Who buys this service? Does it require heavy hitter sales people or are customers just entering their credit card number in to a web form? Do you just make up the prices as you go along?
Sadly, I believe my lack of understanding means that I'll probably never be successful as an entrepreneur. I'm still trapped in the "I must build a better iPhone to succeed as an entrpreneur" mindset. Obviously one can build an ad network instead. But I just. don't. get. it. Please advise.
If you're doing any sort of Internet startup, you should really try to develop an understanding of the online ad market, either to monetize your app or market it.
Ad networks are very simple- they connect advertisers with publishers and take a cut(usually 30-50%) of the advertiser's spend.
The reason BlueLithium was(and remains) so successful is that instead of targeting the entire network of publishers or simply segmenting them by channels/topics, they pioneered some rudimentary behavioral targeting to show ads to people who were more likely to click on them. This led to lower CPA/CPC for advertisers, which means they were willing to pay more for impressions. That led to BlueLithium being able to pay publishers more, resulting in rapid growth for the network.
Comments
I watched the Mixergy thing and read these notes, and have read other stuff about this guy. I was in Silicon Valley when he built and sold his startups. At the time, I did not understand what his startups did, and I still do not understand how ad startups like this work or make money. I especially don't know why they make $300M instead of $3M or even $3000. How does the product work? How is it sold? Who buys this service? Does it require heavy hitter sales people or are customers just entering their credit card number in to a web form? Do you just make up the prices as you go along?
Sadly, I believe my lack of understanding means that I'll probably never be successful as an entrepreneur. I'm still trapped in the "I must build a better iPhone to succeed as an entrpreneur" mindset. Obviously one can build an ad network instead. But I just. don't. get. it. Please advise.
If you're doing any sort of Internet startup, you should really try to develop an understanding of the online ad market, either to monetize your app or market it.
Ad networks are very simple- they connect advertisers with publishers and take a cut(usually 30-50%) of the advertiser's spend.
The reason BlueLithium was(and remains) so successful is that instead of targeting the entire network of publishers or simply segmenting them by channels/topics, they pioneered some rudimentary behavioral targeting to show ads to people who were more likely to click on them. This led to lower CPA/CPC for advertisers, which means they were willing to pay more for impressions. That led to BlueLithium being able to pay publishers more, resulting in rapid growth for the network.
Feel the same here. The only people making serious cash on the internet seem to be either selling ads or running scams.