258cib - 2:34 pm on Apr 28, 2004 (gmt 0)

Thanks. It's been an interesting week. Fools rush in...

A system like Tacoda's new behaviorally targeted ad network AudienceMatch (or aQuantive's new DRIVEpm) is what I have been offering to online news operations. I only offered highly targeted contextual matching, but it could be linked into demographic data where the web site had it.
[mediapost.com...]

Tacoda Systems and aQuantive have discovered what I have found--the publishers will not build and market this, they've got to build it themselves AND sell the PPC ads, too, vis a via Google Adsense.

Not me, babe.

Yellow Pages in real life gets about a dollar per inquiry. Overture reports about 30 cents. And it's going to be interesting to see if you can determine what Google averages per click from their financial filings. Not much, I'd bet. G knows it is a volume biz. That's not just G's business plan, that's the nature of the net.

From what I have seen only the top dozen or so news web sites in the U.S. are making any money at all, and they're really not getting much a return on their investment. (CNN.com--number one or two on most lists-- has flatly said this is their case.) Tacoda and aQuantive are on the right track, IF it will work at all. (Despite their chat about PPC, this is about branding.) Again, I'm not sure they can get the volume to make their investment back.

So ads don't work, subscriptions don't work on the web. I tried and failed. I'm out of ideas. I'm out of the way so someone else can try.