Comments on: “Stealing MySpace” and my personal experience monetizing MySpace ads

By: jonathanmendez

jonathanmendez — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 12:22:39 +0000

Twitter should just leverage what people are searching for most in a social and communications setting, people.

If you think of twitter as social search with commercial queries becoming names &entertainment then the SERP can be people and the conversions can be follows. I would bid on quite a few keywords to get followers. This is direct monetization for twitter but indirect for the user (advertiser). Still, CPM is indirect and most ads are based on that. At least this builds a following, and what is more important these days for brands, even personal ones?

Ultimately like most everything else my value on the web is based on the audience I curate and then where I drive them. The residual value to all this is that the more traffic twitter drives the more value it has. No? Just some thoughts….

By: jonathanmendez

jonathanmendez — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 11:57:51 +0000

I remember you telling me this story - awesome that you would post it. A perfect companion piece with what I just read on Gurley's blog about TenCent http://bit.ly/10zLpU tells you all you need to know about SM monetization.

By: Dave84

Dave84 — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 09:24:55 +0000

Amazing Information….

Thanks! for this. It shed so much light.

By: Andrew Chen

Andrew Chen — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 02:57:16 +0000

Great data! Very useful, thanks Adam.

By: Adam Bain

Adam Bain — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 02:53:40 +0000

Andrew--
on search, there's an interesting report out by AdGooroo which can give you a clue on latest commercial query volume:

* Google: 42 percent of Google keywords contain no ads throughout the course of a given month; 13 percent have only one ad; 15 percent have ten or more ads.

* Live Search is similar to Google in that keywords tend to have either no ads (33 percent) or a full page of them (30 percent have seven or more ads).

* Yahoo! search results pages tend to have the most ads. Only 18 percent of Yahoo! keywords displayed no ads, while 41 percent of keywords displayed eight or more.

By: Vishal

Vishal — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 02:50:27 +0000

Awesome analysis in the post and again in the comment. I think you have the best blog on online advertising and Social media.

By: Andrew Chen

Andrew Chen — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 23:40:59 +0000

back when we were young and foolish

By: Brandon

Brandon — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 22:54:14 +0000

Ah the good ol' days.

By: aweissman

aweissman — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 18:18:01 +0000

Pls turn this comment into a blog

I think (maybe I hope) the nature of twitter is different that other “social networks” and, as such, you or I and others might search twitter – summize – in a commercial mode in ways they wouldnt with other applications and services. For example, currently I think a high volume of searches relate to web apps. That's commercial. Also, local.

By: Andrew Chen

Andrew Chen — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 17:14:55 +0000

I should write more about monetizing search queries sometime – just as one pageview is not worth the same as another, and it depends on factors like geo, demographics, context, frequency caps, etc. – search queries also don't monetize the same.

In particular, it's an important issue that a search service get a large % of “commercial queries” which are the bread and butter of search monetization. These are things that people do before buying a service or goods, like product reviews, price shopping, etc.

I don't know what the searches on Twitter look like – you would know better than me But at least for social networks, many of the searches are around names, entertainment, etc., which are not that monetizable. You need people to think that THE place to start a commercial query is a social network (or Twitter), and then you're in the business.

I should turn this comment into a blog

IIRC, I went to a Yahoo-sponsored event years back where they publicly broke down their commercial queries. They said that something like 30-40% of their queries were commercial, and then about 50% of the commercial queries had advertisers bidding on it. So net/net, about 15-20% of their queries make money, and then other 80-85% are “free” queries that drive engagement but don't make money. (I may be getting the numbers off by a bit, but the idea is right)

So the question is, how much value does Twitter search have? What percentage are commercial, and then what % of those queries could you get advertisers to spend money on?

By: Andrew Chen

Andrew Chen — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 17:08:49 +0000

Yeah, I think the fact Facebook is one of the top properties on the web but making 1/10th what the big portals are making is that they are holding out on the new uber-monetization scheme to make money, rather than depending on remnant ads.

We actually did a meeting with Facebook when they just got started and were like 15 people or so? I remember that they were running remnant ads and ran a lot of online poker ads back then

By: aweissman

aweissman — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 17:03:05 +0000

Nice piece, as always. Realizing you weren't necessarily writing about Twitter, but you did , so, one would think that Twitter search would be an important and highly monetizable part of the service becuase (a) its search and (b) its relevant.

No?

By: Dan

Dan — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 15:36:08 +0000

Great post Andrew, and the “behind the scenes” insight is great. I am surprised no mention of Facebook, though. Do you think the same lessons apply there (lack of commercial intent, though high engagement and growth). How about those big brand deals that Myspace was willing to do — Facebook not so much?