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Comment on Ask HN: How do B2C "free-tilities" like evite make money?

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Much of their advertising is very much larger CPMs as part of agency buys across IAC's entire network. Certain "party" brands such as Bacardi target Evite on a regular basis given their obvious alignment with the audience. The direct sales team there takes them to task on the rates in comparo with a Adwords. Big G pays out only 25% of ad revenue to content partners (and that is weighted more towards their higher converting brands than lower publishers). Direct sell + high CPM works relatively well with a large network, affinity group of sites or a niche vertical master brand.

Advice (roughly 10 yrs in media/content) would be to completely own a niche or vertical with a strong brand and loyal spend-oriented audience. This can be through traditional media, aggregation, gaming or utility. Adwords will never truly support a product of this scale of effort, which is probably why its utility, benefit and opinion for publishers ranges near the bottom of the toilet. Push relationships...with your product...with your users...with your customers.

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