No, I'm assuming that they could just buy ads with the same ROI in many places. For instance, if Facebook ads cost 20 cents cpm, but they earn 40 cents, then their ROI is 2x. I would assume they would have no trouble finding ads elsewhere with a 2x ROI. In fact, I'd be surprised if the market didn't function to make their ads be a 2x ROI at MySpace, Bebo, Hi5, and maybe Digg, Reddit, etc.
Spotting market inefficiencies like that should be really hard to do, considering that all of the mortgage brokers, for instance, already know their ROI on various sites, and the market will make it roughly equal everywhere over time.
Your putting too much faith in the buyers of ads reacting to the changes in prices and knowing exactly how much the traffic they are buying is actually worth. All mortgage broker's/free i-pod scam/dating site/etc know the exact ROI they get back from each and every little bit of traffic? No way. In some industries, theres even a bunch of buyers, some less sophisticated than others, but are yet still able to buy the traffic at a certain rate because they are making a profit at that rate. That isn't optimization. In industries with fewer buyers (high traffic dating sites), one site might have to purchase traffic from a multitude of different sources, or indirectly purchasing it from their own affiliates who might purchase it themselves, to keep up their market share against other big competitors.
This isn't about spotting temporary market inefficiencies, its about spotting long term ones that lurk beneath the surface.
Comments
No, I'm assuming that they could just buy ads with the same ROI in many places. For instance, if Facebook ads cost 20 cents cpm, but they earn 40 cents, then their ROI is 2x. I would assume they would have no trouble finding ads elsewhere with a 2x ROI. In fact, I'd be surprised if the market didn't function to make their ads be a 2x ROI at MySpace, Bebo, Hi5, and maybe Digg, Reddit, etc.
Spotting market inefficiencies like that should be really hard to do, considering that all of the mortgage brokers, for instance, already know their ROI on various sites, and the market will make it roughly equal everywhere over time.
Your putting too much faith in the buyers of ads reacting to the changes in prices and knowing exactly how much the traffic they are buying is actually worth. All mortgage broker's/free i-pod scam/dating site/etc know the exact ROI they get back from each and every little bit of traffic? No way. In some industries, theres even a bunch of buyers, some less sophisticated than others, but are yet still able to buy the traffic at a certain rate because they are making a profit at that rate. That isn't optimization. In industries with fewer buyers (high traffic dating sites), one site might have to purchase traffic from a multitude of different sources, or indirectly purchasing it from their own affiliates who might purchase it themselves, to keep up their market share against other big competitors.
This isn't about spotting temporary market inefficiencies, its about spotting long term ones that lurk beneath the surface.