Sunday, November 11, 2007

Bubble 2.0?

A couple of things. First, here's a simple reason why we aren't going to see Bubble 2.0. U.S. Internet advertising is expected to double to $42 billion over the next four years. I'm seeing a lot of activity and interest from major agencies and advertisers on RockYou's ad platform on Facebook, completely outside of Facebook's own material initiatives with advertisers. Obviously a complete downturn in the economy can derail everything, but outside of that fairly remote possibility, there's a lot of strength beneath the business models of next-gen online destinations.

Sites like LinkedIn, Kayak and Sidestep are generating $30-$50MM in annual revenues with eCPMs in the triple digits. Wordpress.com has over 80MM unique visitors (check quantcast) with all of 18 employees, monetizing hundreds of millions of PVs through Federated Media. Not even going to mention RockYou or Slide :) I find references to Bubble 2.0 completely ignorant of the shifts in both internet usage and marketing $. Enough said.
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