1. If low online CPMs were a result of oversupply, why haven’t CPMs in other media dropped by the same amounts? If oversupply were why prices are so low, not efficacy, then online media would be a substitute for other media and ad spend would shift to the low-cost medium, equalizing prices. This is not […]
Media has always been an attention economy
My friend John Krystynak finally got around to reading my old post, Supply of What?. In it I argue that a surplus of advertising inventory online is not the cause of low CPMs. He vehemently disagrees: First you say “there is not appreciably more inventory”. HA. Prima Facie ridiculous. Are you talking about online? THERE’S […]
What is it worth?
Maybe this is obvious. Things are worth different things to different people. Companies, pork bellies, advertising inventory. Any things. If the thing is worth more to someone other than its current owner, the owner might sell it to that person, creating value for both. The value to the buyer (b in the picture below) has […]
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Shirky: Advertising Now Priced at its Real Value
Clay Shirky, in a fairly recent talk, observes [Newspaper’s making their money from advertising] was the historic circumstance, and it lasted for decades. But it was an accident. There was a set of forces that made that possible. And they weren’t deep truths — the commercial success of newspapers and their linking of that to […]
Skidelsky on Scapegoating
Here’s something I’ve been trying to say for a year, poorly. Skidelsky in his new book, Keynes: The Return of the Master, says it succinctly: Whenever anything goes badly wrong, our first instinct is to blame those in charge–in this case, bankers, credit agencies, regulators, central bankers and governments. We turn to blame the ideas […]
Is the Time for Angels Past?
In the past month I’ve had two companies that I’ve committed to investing in come back and say a VC has decided to take the whole round. These were the best two deals in my funnel. The next two best companies are asking for non-standard deal terms. I don’t do non-standard deal terms (after twelve […]
Communities vs. Networks
My first job, at IBM, I knew nothing about computers. Why they hired me to design mainframe CP logic, I can’t figure out. Columbia taught Electrical Engineering as a liberal art, so while I graduated able to talk in detail about semiconductor physics and hold my own in a conversation about Claude Shannon’s master’s thesis, […]
It might have turned out badly if I’d been on anything but a Harley
One Wednesday 1am in the years when I couldn’t sleep I wandered into a ramshackle biker bar out route 46 and found a guitarist playing the blues. The guy was like 50 and looked like an accounting professor, but man could he play. I listened until he closed the place down and left on the […]
But, then, why have a website at all?
I’ve been sitting in front of my computer all day, doing general industry research: who does what, who the competitors in specific micro-segments are (i.e. who the ten billion companies competing to be the leading real-time mobile app video advertising social behaviorial targeting data exchange are. OK, that was a bit of hyperbole, but not […]