Will There Ever be a Viable Adsense Competitor?

http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/blog/2008/04/will-there-ever-be-a-viable-ad.html

by epi0Bauqu • 18 years ago

12 9 18 years ago

maurycy3• 18 years ago

People always seem to make the same mistakes in their thinking, again and again.

Few years ago no one thought that IBM can be crushed. It looked like an eternal company that nearly monopolized the market. Then, Microsoft appeared and changed the computer industry we know. After few years, everyone recognized Microsoft as a giant forever. Of course, it didn't take too much time to Yahoo! to appear, and then, to Google to appear.

Other thing we can learn from the history is that today's market doesn't matter in the long run. You don't innovate by fighting their own game, but by creating your own, with your rules.

epi0Bauqu2• 18 years ago

I'm not sure if you are referring to me (the post's author) or not. In any case, what I was trying to say, is "where is the viable AdSense competitor?" and not "that there will never be one." In fact, the post casually argues the opposite, i.e. that there should be one already!

Or are you trying to say that it is a waste of time to chase AdSense and instead one should concentrate on some end-run around it? To that I would say, well, both! There seems no no reason to forgo billions of dollars in yearly revenue for the foreseeable future.

maurycy3• 18 years ago

Yes, I partially reffer to you, but in a broader sense.

The most important to recognize, in my opinion, is that there is no such thing as a huge market of delivering Google-alike ads. There's only a market of finding right customers for companies, and this is the market that makes billions of dollars every year. (just like there's no "Turkish food market" -- there's only "cheap quickly delivered food for busy people market")

This is how the innovation works: you find completely new answers to old problems. And what you asked for is a mere slighty better reiteration of the answer that works pretty well. Unfortunately, if you want to grab the money from the desk, you can't do this.

rw• 18 years ago

Yes.

caudicus• 18 years ago

So either you are working on some startup that will be a viable competitor but are still in the famed "stealth mode", or you know public information you are not sharing with us. C'moonnn, tell us more. ;)

tom_rath• 18 years ago

I think the question to ask instead is if there will be a viable _AdWords_ competitor. Without a strong pool of ads, you won’t have a competitive alternative.

Looking at the system from my own perspective as an advertiser:

Google AdWords is absolutely amazing in its flexibility, customization, speed, return on investment, etc. The tools provided are wonderfully helpful and I happily shovel gobs of cash to The Google every month.

Microsoft AdCenter (Live.com) isn’t quite as flexible, but it’s getting there. The tools are decent and improving, with the only limiting factor being the modest number of visitors their search engine receives. The dribble of click traffic from Live.com / MSN is small, but it’s worth paying for.

Yahoo Search Marketing by contrast is an absolute joke. The ad system is slow, inflexible, unreliable and a complete waste of time and cash. Even the most basic filtering option –- displaying ads only on Yahoo’s Search page –- isn’t available, and so your ads will appear on every spammy domain squatting and adware site under the sun. If you’ve a high per-click cost, advertising cash spent at Yahoo is completely wasted and is best directed back to (you guessed it) Google.

Ask.com, etc: Similar. Within a day of signing up and advertising, you’ll see a remarkable number of clicks, all originating from sleazy domain squatters and link farms. As far as competing for ads goes, these guys aren’t even in the race.

My dream: I’d love to see Microsoft acquire Yahoo and replace Yahoo’s joke of an ad management system with Live.com’s halfway decent alternative. That one action alone would probably do more for Yahoo’s bottom line than any number of new niche content network improvements... but that’s another rant entirely.

Will There Ever be a Viable Adsense Competitor?

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