Archive for the ‘Analysis’ Category
In 2007 we saw a lot of ad network purchases by the big boys. Google snapped up Double-Click, and Yahoo, AOL and WPP also purchased. This leads me to finding out what ad networks we might see emerge in 2008. The list below is some of the advertising networks i expect to see more and more of in 2008, either in the form of financing or acquisition.
The Ad Network List
Federated Media – Federate Media is a unique take on an advertising network. Most of the larger ad networks simply try to sell advertising based on shear numbers and not really taking into account the individual voice of the authors or even how much the brand of the site is worth. Focusing on brands and authors individual voices, are the areas in which Federated Media are focused. This doesnt make the site or blogger change in anyway and leverages on that to bring in higher revenues for advertising space.
Ad Toll – AdToll is the advertising network that is so simple to use and integrate with your site. AdToll is a trustworthy service that allows web site owners to generate revenue through advertising. AdToll is the link between Publishers who want to sell ads on their web sites and Advertisers who want to buy ads. The service also shows all stats from your site and even possible click thru rates for each type of banner and positioning of the banner. If you are a small publisher then AdToll has to be high on your list for ad networks.
Aductions – Aductions is the transperant ad network. I tend to call it an ad network, but it is more a marketplace, connecting advertisers with publishers. Aductions has so many options for your site as a publisher, you can select the size of the advertising you are going to sell and also if your going to sell advertising on CPM or CPC base. This platform is highly customisable on both sides of the coin (be it advertiser or publisher). This site is growing at a rapid pace so make sure you head over there early and get on the bandwagon.
Ad Roll – Ad Roll is the collective advertising network that focuses on getting publishers in the same niches to join forces and sell advertising across a group of sites instead of just one. This is a great idea as the basic principle of bargaining power comes into fruition. If your a small to medium publisher you must join this network, because it will allow you to make maximum revenues for your traffic.
BlogAds – BlogAds is a similar service to Federated Media but with a bit of a twist. BlogAds does what the name says, only provides advertising solutions to weblogs. Currently it is hard to get into their network, because the only way in is to get referred by a current publisher in the network and even then they are focus on certain niches and have certain limitations. However, this being said, this ad network is very personalised with some great blogs on their books and if you did join im sure they will maximise your revenues to its utmost extent.
Pheedo – Pheedo is the RSS advertising network of the group and it is growing steady in a market that is underutilised. Pheedo provides a simple solution for selling advertising in your RSS feeds. I have found this type of advertising totally underutilised and im sure Pheedo will always be leading the push in this market. Advertising in RSS feeds is not going to make you rich, mainly because it is hard to quantify the views and click thru thus top level advertisers arent willing to invest too much money.
Disclosures: AdToll and Aductions are currently advertisers on Crenk. I am also a consultant for Aductions.
 Back in October last year Google acquired Jaiku (Finnish micro-blogging startup) and I thought this was a great move for the little micro-blogging startup, especially considering that there were two big players in the same market at the time (Twitter and Pownce).
Now it is being reported that Google has been letting Jaiku just float around. When Google announced the acquisition, Jaiku would have new features coming very soon, new users will be able to register shortly, and even the official Jaiku blog has had no action, all of these have just not happened. Thus, most the Jaiku faithful need to head somewhere to keep on microblogging, so where? Well that answer is very simple, Twitter! Google better get something moving quite fast because im sure once the users head over to Twitter and see that the community over there is strong, then the user base will not be coming back to Jaiku.
U.S. music sales dropped another 9.5% last year compared to 2006 despite a 44% increase in digital track sales according to Nielson Soundscan.
500.5 million albums sold in various formats last year down 15% from 2006. Only 10% of album sales were digital. But the drop re-calculates to 9.5% when sales of digital singles are counted as 10-track equivalent albums. 844.2 million digital tracks were sold in 2007 compared to 588.2 million in 2006.
iTunes became the third-largest music retailer in the U.S. in 2007.
In the last few days I have been reading some great articles over at RWW on the music industry, where it is headed and how Apple could potentially lose its dominance. These articles have fueled great debates on the RWW site and here is my take on the whole music industry.
Having the Complete Package
Josh wrote a great article at RWW that basically talked about Apple and how they are slowly coming under fire from Amazon and Zune. I think the situation is very straight forward until someone really tries to shake up the market!
Apple currently has 70% of the portable music player market and approx 85% of the music download market. Apple additionally has a very strong brand awareness and loyalty. Apple are very smart at what they do and for companies who only offer part of their package, it will be very difficult for them to compete and actually grab any market presence. Im sure we will see companies like Amazon attempt to attack parts of the music market but if they succeed in any particular area (such as cut pricing of downloads and DRM free downloads), then Apple will just calculate the right times to cover the advances and offer equal services. At the end of the day Apple knows that they have brand loyalty like no other and services such as Amazon Mp3 in the long run will only help them sell more iPods or Macs, because these people who download have to put their music somewhere.
In terms of Zune they have been receiving some good reviews for their new product, however this is Microsoft we are talking about. Microsoft has long been serial monopolists and Zune is not going to change that fact. Apple have of course AAC files that can only be played on iPods and Microsoft have exactly the same with the Zune.
At present no one can challenge Apples dominance and I dont think anyone will challenge them for at least another 5 years. Microsoft with Zune have just launched a product and service exactly the same as Apple did years ago with the iPod and iTunes, there is no difference to me. Amazon however, have launched a service that was need, a service that offers DRM free music not via subscription and via a cut price. Amazon hit a small gap in the market that was needed, but does this mean they will get any where near iTunes? No chance in hell!!
Future of DRM
I predict that 2008 will be the year that all the big 4 (Sony BMG, Universal, Warner and EMI) start selling DRM free music more openly. Amazon has Warner on the books and iTunes has EMI already signed up with Warner to come on board very soon.
In 2007 there have been lots of experiments with the music business model, such as Radiohead and also Amie Street, but have they proved anything? Yes I think they have. The Amie Street business model of offering music low and then prices increase when the track becomes popular has proved so successful that Amazon has bought into the company. Radiohead proved that selling digitally on a website can be just as popular as selling on the huge iTunes.
Conclusions. Overall, I really think customers are willing to pay for good quality music, especially DRM free music that can be transported to any portable music player, but only at the right price! Im still not too sure if we have found the right price yet. This is mainly due to the big 4 wanting to make a good margin on their sales on iTunes, thus prices are currently high. I cant wait to see a service that skips all of the hassels and just offers a simple service that sells good quality mp3s DRM free at a price such as $0.50 per download.
What Needs to Happen to Break the Music Industry
Currently, I am CEO of a company which is entering the music space but focusing on music licensing and distribution. Hypothetically, if I had the resources and money to launch a product in the music industry that would compete with iTunes and Apple, I would do the following.
- Digital music downloads need to have a copyright system in place that actually tracks who the music is sold to and if the music is transported between computers or players it just needs to be unlocked via a password or something similar.
- Offer a DRM free music store in which the music can be transfered to any portable music player
- Offer a reasonable price and optimize the transaction fee the third party takes.
- Then offer other vertical services such as videos, games, ebooks and more.
- Finally, move into horizontal integration, such as a revolutionary portable music player, online and satellite radio stations and many more ideas.
This is the only way I can see someone breaking the Apple dominance and taking at least some share of the music market. If you are a VC and would like to fund my idea, please get in touch with me! haha. I love a challenge!
Myspace News has just not happened! There was a lot of press about the news feature that will be added to myspace and how it could potentially be a Digg killer, but nothing has eventuated. News Corp and Myspace have just done absolutely nothing with this service, letting it just sink into the very background of the Myspace product and drown.
The News service was supposed to be somewhat similar to Google News and many other out there in the market. It has a nice design and it currently functioning but has never been linked in to profiles or advertisements on Myspace.
Once logged in to Myspace in the left hand column in the backend of your user control panel there is a big list of all products and services that Myspace offers and their News section is not even included in the this!
Myspace News has to one of the biggest flops of 2007!
This past weekend, I spent a few hours surfing through YouTube for user generated video content. Apart from watching funny videos of people doing the Soldier Boy dance, I also use the site to check for technology related videos. Most recently was the video broadcast of Google’s 2007 Analyst Day. The event was attended by many analysts interested in finding out what the company had in store for the future years to come.
I have always admired Google because of the way they revolutionized how we behave on the web. Consumers are constantly jumping for joy when Google rolls out a new product because all they require to use these products is to sit through a few contextual advertisements. Some people think their ultimate goal is to offer every imaginable service in return for showing ads to users who wish to use their suite of products.
My question has always been how they plan on monetizing YouTube? My favorite joy when surfing through Youtube is that I can spend hours on the site without seeing any obtrusive advertisement. I understand Google makes its money from displaying text ads next to relevant content, but I can’t help but wonder how they plan on duplicating the same model when it comes to the number one video sharing site.
I think they can get away with displaying non obtrusive ads on proprietary content of big TV stations, but spreading these ads to user generated content will definitely rub a lot of people the wrong way. My only solution thus far is to start off by capping the number of videos every user can view and advising them that some text or other form of rich media advertisement may be displayed once the cap has been exceeded. This strategy in my opinion will slowly sensitize their users with respect to seeing ads next to video content.
Today was the first time I have ever used the BlogLines site, I know what your thinking (is he serious) and the answer is yes. Currently I used Google Reader to monitor all of my RSS feeds and I have never really been interested in change and after browsing Bloglines im still not really interested. However, when searching for Crenk is comes up with the results and also shows the amount of subscribers from Bloglines and currently it is only siting at 4 subscribers. Why is this? Do a lot more of the market use Google instead of Bloglines and how can I promote my own blog within Bloglines to help their users find my site and then subscribe?
If anyone has some advice on the above please let me know and I will publish it all right here!
YouTube has become a meca site in the last year. In the early days it was not so hard to upload yourself singing in from of your computer and then overnight you would be a superstar, but these days most of that kinda stuff doesnt exist and it actually takes talent to be a must watch on YouTube.
After half a year of testing out its Partners platform with only 100 contributors, YouTube has now opened up this platform to all. The criteria for the partner program is as follows:
- You create original videos suitable for online streaming.
- You own the copyrights and distribution rights for all audio and video content that you upload — no exceptions.
- You regularly upload videos that are viewed by thousands of YouTube users.
- You live in the United States or Canada.
If you actually adhear to all of the above criteria then you can apply for the program and in return YouTube will actually allow you to make money from your videos, with their revenue sharing program. They havent actually announced yet what percentage of the Adsense revenue you will receive, but knowing the Giant that is Google it isnt going to be too much. 50% if you amazingly lucky.
YouTube has long been a place where video makers couldnt make any money from their videos, but could gain exposure that would instantly shoot then into stardom and allowing them to make money from other revenue streams. As we already some videos are mostly viewed off the YouTube site so im not too sure if these views will could towards your potential advertising revenue, because most sites currently off the site dont carry any ads at all (so will this change?).
Im so happy to see YouTube open their partners section up, because the company in which im CEO will be launching our music distribution company in the coming months and we already have a lot of music videos that now actually have a potential to make money on the worlds largest video site.
For a long time now Metacafe and Revver have been sharing their video ad revenues with contributors, but it has always made me wonder why these sites havent promote that fact a lot more and actually gained some traction on what is the YouTube juggernaut.
I dont normally do this but I thought I would tell all my readers about an interesting site I have been reading for a while now, Bloggin-Ads. Bloggin-Ads was created by Mike to explore the whole Blogging Community by reviewing a blog every single day. Mike started this idea because he felt that people paying to get reviewed was not very fair to smaller blogs or blogs that do not receive income.
The site itself has a very simple but very effective design and a distinct colour scheme too boot. I really like the idea of the site and I have seen it grow to over 140 rss subscribers very quickly.
Great idea, well executed and look forward to seeing it grow even more.
My recent post about bloggers earnings reports has created quite a stir.
The post itself has got some really good comments from some creditable names around the blogosphere, such as Yaro and Everton.
The post basically looked at the earnings of a select few and then tried to understand if these figures are creditable or not. The discussion on the post has been quite mixed.
A couple of the bloggers did define there earnings exactly like i was hoping they would, but in the process Everton from ConnectedInternet.co.uk did get quite annoyed. In this case from his November earnings i couldnt tell how much traffic his site currently received for the month, so all i had to go by was Alexa, Compete, Quantcast and Technorati. In which the majority of the sites seemed to say that their traffic was very low. However, Everton did respond in a post and actually clarrified that his traffic was currently approx 500k pageviews per month, thus meaning he has more traffic then John Chow and possibly Shoemoney. Therefore, if his traffic numbers are correct and he is only earning approx $9000 per month from this then he is now under performing.
Other sites that were on the other end of the discussion was Lilian, Randy and Onion Spirit. I still think they you have to take these earning with a grain of salt and I dont understand why when people disclose their earnings the newbie’s to the internet game think that this is amazing, because it is not!! The minority of bloggers who disclose their earnings have actually been in the online blogging or marketing game for a long period of time and they now have built up good traffic and slowly finding the right technique to maximise their revenues, this is really not rocket science. So newbie’s please stop worrying about how much revenue other blogs or your blog makes and try to focus on the key areas of building readership numbers, building a community, writing good content, having a distinct focus and then you will really start to reap the rewards.
Mr Chow has an article that is so true but when you are starting out in the weblog industry you dont really realize. This discussion was about Traffic and Revenue.
John discusses his weblog numbers from a year ago against his figures now. As most people know John like to promote himself and about how much he earns from his site. If you read John’s income report than you know his blog made $27,240.83 last month. That’s a nice big increase over the $2,139.93 the blog made in November of 2006. However, most people dont realise that John’s weblog had more traffic in November 2006 than it does now.
If you are starting your own weblog then it is a lot more important to gain as much traffic as you can, but once this is achieved then it is a great deal easier to increase your eCPM than build even more traffic. John Chow’s weblog is a real life example of this!
However, what John doesnt understand is that he is an expert in increasing eCPM without interfering with his readers and turning them away from his site. To increase your eCPM quick and most efficiently is to sell advertising that is based on CPM. Thus, for every 1000 page views your revenue will increase exponentially.
Finally, as far as I am aware John currently adds in his revenues from RSS inline text links to his financial reports, but as he has so many thousand more RSS readers currently than he had in November 2006, this is also where the majority of his increase in income could be coming from.
There are a lot of bloggers out there in the “Make Money Online” market and a few seemed to have started a habit that is catching on, Earnings Reports. These reports are most written every month in which the blogger discloses his or her basic earnings, but this brings me to the point are these earning figures fact or fiction?
For a long time now blogger have been keeping their traffic reports and earnings quite, until a selective few bloggers started this habit of disclosures and now more and more are joining the fad. If you are in the niche of “Making Money Online” it has been well known that it is a strong selling point to do what you preach, so in order to be an expert you have to be making money from your blog. Thus, it seems to be that most bloggers who disclose their earnings are inflating the amounts just to gain recognition.
Some examples of earnings disclosures are:
What is really missing from all of these reports is that the bloggers dont disclose if all the money was earned from their one site or from a group of sites that they own and operate. Personally, I think the group of bloggers listed above are only trying to push their own causes in disclosing earning and they should all be taken with a pinch of salt!
