Marc's Voice

I TOTALLY agree with Clemons

The timeframe may not be right - and it may be 10-15 years before we get there - but advertising will only represent 20% of all revenues coming from the web - sounds about right to me.

That is what I have been saying to my consulting clients - for years.  None of them ever believed me, but now I got a professor saying the same thing.  So it must be correct - right?

So what WILL be the breakup of revenues - 5-10-15 years out?

- 20% advertising

- 20% on-demand content - movies, music, art, news, info, knowledge

- 17% eCommerce - selling new stuff - bricks and mortar moved on-line

- 12% marketplace - Long Tail sales, bartering, auctions, listings, digital goods, selling used stuff, rentals. These are the ‘accessories to virtual communities’ that Clemons talked about.

- 8% cloud services - storage, persistent profiles, computing, meshing, syncing

- 6% subscription fees - ever heard of Web 2.0?  Well then there’s Web 3.0  Then after that Web 4.0.  They’ll always be the next Twitter - sucking up our attention and excitement

- 4% gaming, virtual worlds, experienced based fees - just pure fun

- 3% tiered freemium services - otherwise known as ’software tools’ - this is the business I wanna be in.  I think there’s a new kind of tool coming, which will get us back to ‘general purpose’ tools.  New kinds of Swiss Army Knives.  Maybe this should be part of the subscription fees - but I like to break it out separately - because we’ll be (easily) able to charge separately for these tools.  Think of it as you get ’something’ for free, but it has limited capacity and depth.  You can then use the tool ‘lightly’ forever.  But at the very moment when you REALLY depend upon the tool, is when you hit the brick wall - and there’s the $50 version, the $150 full featured version and the $500 community sysop version.  IMHO.

- 3% contests, promotions, giveways - this is another way advertisers get their message out - but they have to put the money into OUR pockets

- 2% real estate related revenues - this downturn has helped start the paradigm shift of how people buy homes

- 2% travel related revenues - same thing with travel.  And bartering for timeshare access.

- 2% attention marketplace - where users can monetize themselves

- 1% Misc. - whatever doesn’t fit into my categories above

Call me crazy - but 20% from advertising sounds about right to me. I totally agree with Clemons!