Above the Crowd

Many consumer Internet business executives are loyalists of the Lifetime Value model, often referred to as the LTV model or formula. Lifetime value is the net present value of the profit stream of a customer. This concept, which appears on the surface to be quite benign, is typically used to compare the costs of acquiring a customer (often referred to as SAC, which stands for Subscriber Acquisition Costs) with the discounted positive cash flows that will come from that customer over time. As long as the sum of the discounted future cash flows are significantly higher than the SAC, then […]

“Little Joe never once gave it away Everybody had to pay and pay”                   — Lou Reed, Walk on the Wild Side The consensus seems to be that social networks have a monetization problem.  On this topic, both the leading technology industry blogs  and the world’s top news organizations  agree.  The problem is not that these sites have no revenue.   I “guesstimate” that MySpace and Facebook have annual revenue run-rates of approximately $650mm and $450mm respectively – highly reputable numbers.  The perceived problem relates directly to revenue per user or page view, as these are two of the most heavily trafficked sites on the […]

Many companies and visionaries have pontificated about the future of video ads and different techniques for monetizing online videos.  A big part of this is driven by the fact that while YouTube is a huge user success, its a less proven monetization success.  On a recent trip to NYC, an idea came up which I can’t get out of my head, and the more I think about it, the more I believe that it is the Holy Grail for the future of online advertising.  But before I disclose the big “ah-ha,” a few caveats: 1) No one will ever monetize commodity content well.  If the same […]