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---- Preparing for the next burst bubble - Protecting Income
rasputinsghost - 6:38 pm on Sep 25, 2012 (gmt 0)
We all remember the dot com bubble bursting - and the "sub-prime" debacle.
There are numerous accounts (on this forum and others) about how advertising revenues have fallen off.
Seeing that that is how many site members earn a living, that scenario is really scary, especially in this economic climate.
What in the world is going on?
Lets look at Facebook for a few clues.
They did an IPO at a price that was (in the opinion of everyone who was NOT a broker selling the IPO stock or the victims of these brokers) "somewhat overpriced".
Please remember that these are the exact same brokers that invented the "sub-prime" "instrument" that caused the financial screwup of 2008.
So Mr Zuckerberg is now uber rich and schmoozing with the "broker" gang. But essentially he has lost touch with his company and it is running wild.
Try using the Facebook Login on your site - the code that is now available is buggy and the "help/how to" pages are for previous versions or the links just do not work.
Seems like the technical boys and girls are celebrating / spending their IPO bonuses and the whole lot is falling apart.
Now it would appear that Facebook has not got an iron lock on all the information within the company because somehow it leaked out that the advertising models that the brokers were using to estimate growth and profits were "somewhat flawed".
Essentially the issue is that the Facebook membership is moving away from large format devices (pc's, laptops) and using small format devices (cell phones, pda's etc) which ARE NOT REALLY SUITABLE FOR ADVERT DISPLAYS
So, that is a triple whammy
a development staff that are not delivering usable and reliable core functionality - in fact they are rendering what was there unusable
an IPO that was hyped out of this world, leaving shareholders that are somewhat "annoyed" at the performance of the share
an advertising strategy that has no hope of fulfilling the promises sucked out of the thumbs of the brokers and their spin doctors when they put the IPO together
Now Facebook has to bring their side - they have to pay the dividends promised at IPO time.
Add to that, advertising revenues are shrinking due to the ongoing economic climate AND the fact that no-one has effectively resolved the problem of putting adverts on small format devices - even just putting normal content on these devices is in most cases a mission.
So, the next step will be that the "financial experts and advisers" (some of which are probably the brokers who were promoted due to the "incredible success" of the IPO) will be called in.
This gang will very quickly figure out that they are not going to be able to bring more income into the company, they are going to have to do some "internal redirection" and the only place to do that is with the only source of income, the advertising.
How are they going to do that?
Pretty easily as it turns out.
Remember that there is no way for you to find out what ads were placed in your earning space, who the advertisers were, what type of ads (CPC, CPM) they were and what the money amount was.
Also, there is no way for the advertiser to know where his ads were placed.
Ads will be sold as normal.
Ads will be placed as normal.
All the "MAGIC" will happen during the accounting step.
The process is as follows:
Your part of ANY CPM ad will just get reduces - you don't know what the bids were - you just have to accept what they say.
If the ad is a CPC ad and IS NOT clicked you do not earn anything anyway
If the ad is a CPC ad and IS clicked you will only get every 10th (or whatever) one given to you as a CPC ad clicked (where your share will be "adjusted") and the rest of the time you will be given CPM ad revenue (.005 cents each)
Impossible? Not at all.
Worthwhile? Definitely!
Already happening? In all probability, yes.
Now I have to say that in my opinion, ALL politicians lie (Hint: Monica, WMD) and EVERYONE in the banking / brokerage sectors would not know the truth if it grabbed them by the gonads and twisted real hard. (Bernie Madoff, Barklays Bank, Enron...) And that applies equally to the majority of companies that are "listed" (Hello Mark - fancy meeting you here.)
And the reason that will be given for NOT making full disclosure as far as this subject is concerned will be something along the lines of "we cannot do that because we have to protect our competitive edge and intellectual property".
Seriously?
If you believe that then get in touch!
2nd hand bridge for sale in California. Just been painted red.
Yours for 1.5 million cash - real bargain!
Now how does this slot in to what we know about the biggest advert placement company (along with sooooooooooooo much more) out there?
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