Session 3: New Advertising & Monetization Platforms
Panel of Experts: Marc Andreessen, Roelof Botha, Tony Hsieh, Marissa Mayer, Paul Graham
5to1.com a self-serve ad publishing platform that empowers advertisers and content owners to work as partners toward the common goal of ensuring relevant ad placement in the appropriate context, at the appropriate time, to the appropriate audience. By tapping the intelligence of publishers, 5to1 converts unsold inventory into programmable, sponsor-able, premium inventory. The 5to1 platform restores balance to the marketplace by returning placement and price decision-making to their rightful owners, the web site owners, without increasing operating expenses. Anything that can increase ad rates or sell remnant ads is a good thing. If it really works they will make a lot of money…nickels and dimes per click.
DataXu offers the first real-time ad optimization platform for advertisers. Unlike any other online advertising service, the DataXu platform values, bid manages and buys ads on an impression-by-impression basis, across the ad exchanges operated by Google, Yahoo and others. DataXu increases advertising ROI through automated campaign-specific algorithms that process hundreds of thousands of “ad decisions” a second, each returned in under 100 milliseconds. This game-changing technology empowers advertisers to succeed in the new era of real-time bidding and data-driven decisions. DataXu’s executive team unites leading executives in digital media with MIT technologists. They have really intense technology that does deep analytics, in real time, on advertising response rates. Again, if it works effectively, it will generate lots of revenue.
SeatGeek forecasts the price of sports and concert ticket on the secondary market, analogous to what Farecast (now Bing Travel) does for airline tickets. For ticket buyers this helps determine whether to buy a ticket immediately or wait for a price drop. For sellers it helps identify the optimal time to unload their tickets. SeatGeek's crawlers have compiled millions of ticket transactions and have also aggregated other factors that influence prices. SeatGeek's patent-pending technology uses this data to accurately forecast prices. SeatGeek offers a free version for buyers and will soon release a premium version for brokers and other sellers. SeatGeek forecasts if a ticket will go up or down in price over time. It might make sense to wait until near the show/game date and get it cheaper. You can buy insurance in case SeatGeek forecasts wrong..and you still get the ticket for the cheaper price. Not sure how big the market is for people looking for cheap tickets versus something like StubHub or CheapTickets.
HealthyWage rewards health. We implement health challenges to allow corporations to reward health; we enable employers to offer the healthywage, payments to employees for being healthy. Our first health challenge, the BMI Challenge, pays overweight Americans up to $1,000 to lose weight and move to a normal BMI. This was the best delivered presentation so far today. The amount of the reward isn’t really important…it is the recognition of achieving the reward that really motivates the person to be healthy. I hope they succeed, but I don’t see this as a big money maker.
RackUp leverages behavioral economics to disrupt the $100B gift-card market and, more generally, the prepaid market. Rackup.com features a gift card auction where winners always get more than they pay for. Rackup promotes customer engagement, drives traffic to retailers and increases revenue. Rackup places prepaid gift card back at the center of marketing strategies.
Udorse We each have our own favorite brands, cool designers, new products, and special places. Oftentimes, these are pictured in our photos. Udorse is a cross-platform visual endorsement engine that empowers you to effortlessly endorse the items and places in your photos that you want to help support, and share with your friends. It’s easy and fun. When partner brands are udorsed, you earn real money from them as a reward for your support. You can donate your earnings to your favorite charity, or accept them as cash into your PayPal account. This is like a Pay Per Action (PPA) advertising model. Lots of startups have tried this without success. The cash rewards aren’t big enough to incent users to keep creating new endorsements. Getting viewers to click on the endorsement and take action is much harder than it looks. It makes theoretical sense...not sure it will payoff in practice.
Session 4: Local & Classifieds Marketplaces
iMo transforms your iPhone/iPod Touch into a PC game controller. This is a really neat way to play PC video games (instead of using your PC's boring old keyboard/mouse). Drive your race car, shoot down enemies, bomb fighter planes and a lot more using iMo! The iMo leverages the iPhone/iPod Touch's built-in accelerometer and touch screen to not just mimic the standard game controllers such as the joystick but add a lot more control to take gaming action to the next level. It is a novel use of an iPhone, and would be a big conversation starter, but it isn’t as good as a standard game controller.
Yext is the Next Yellow Pages, offering superior local services for advertisers, publishers and consumers. Nearly 20,000 local advertisers use Yext for affordable and relevant performance-based local advertising service. Yext Numbers, a local search monetization engine, offers publishers superior yield by turning business listings into paid ads. Yext Calls, automatically drives high quality, relevant and searchable phone calls, not web site clicks. Yext records all your business calls, does a speech to text translation, and makes them searchable. Yext works on a Pay Per Action model. Yext already has a Pay Per Call business that is generating about $20M in revenue. They are now extending to Pay Per Action. Businesses pay Yext when they get the “action” they want. This means they don’t pay for a call unless they get a sale or action.
localbacon solves fundamental problems that exist for both employers and job seekers. It basically turns the job boards system upside down by having job seekers pay to apply to jobs on localbacon and employers post their jobs for free. The cost to apply starts at $0.99 and increases based on job seekers' demand for each opportunity. Localbacon's pay to apply model enables job seekers to stand-out from other applicants as well as receive real time updates about their submitted applications. Employers are incentivized with free job posts, higher quality candidates and premium applicant tracking and recruiting tools. Job seekers get better real time feedback and can pay to get better visibility and additional services.
RefMob helps people take advantage of paid referral bonuses offered by their favorite businesses. Using RefMob people share these referral bonuses with others in their social networks, so both the new customer and the current customer profit from referral programs. Businesses also benefit from RefMob through the increased effectiveness of their referral programs and online tools that businesses can use to measure and optimize their referral campaigns. Works well for small businesses and small online commerce companies. Marissa Mayer says they should consider integrating with Yelp. People already go there when they are in buying mode. Offering a referral bonus could be effective.
TheSwop.com is a global tool used by start-ups to protect cash flow and kick start growth. Facilitating the exchange of favors, TheSwop.com encourages collaboration between start-ups, entrepreneurs, investors and suppliers who are willing to help each other out. Any service can be swopped – design, copywriting, blogging, iPhone development, business planning. TheSwop.com is for any start-up – no matter where you are located, whether you are an online business, what level of experience you have or how established your personal and business networks are. TheSwop.com is simple and quick to use: no lock-in, no money held in escrow, no transaction fees. No money changes hands on Swops, but you do earn favor points. You can use favor points to buy other services on Swop. I don’t get the revenue model for Swop. Extracting revenue from a barter system will be tough.
MOTA Motors has created an online platform that powers the private party used car marketplace by delivering convenient, trustworthy and value-driven transactions, resulting in a 15-20% savings for consumers. The MOTA network generates these savings for customers by building on the existing automotive infrastructure to engineer a standardized “For Sale by Owner” (FSBO) transaction experience. By facilitating the key processes and partner relationships within the FSBO platform, MOTA derives revenues through listing fees, lead generation, affiliate marketing and partner services. Mota helps you value your car by asking you questions about your car, when it was last serviced, etc, and compares it to other online pricing guides. Buyers don’t trust sellers to detail the condition of the car, so they facilitate an independent car inspection report at PepBoys. Mota helps buyers and sellers by leading them through standard questions and displaying the information in a standard format. Mota also offers third party extended warranties to protect against unknown issues.
Redbeacon enables consumers to connect with the right local business or individual for their service needs. On Redbeacon.com, consumers can describe what they need done and specify when and where their job should take place. Redbeacon uses technology to determine the best local service providers for the job. If selected, service providers are notified and given the opportunity to submit a price quote for the work. Consumers can then select and book an appointment with their top choice based on business profiles, price quotes, and reviews from past Redbeacon consumers. This is another idea that makes perfect sense in theory, but will probably not work well in practice. Most people use the YellowPages to find small businesses for small tasks. Getting multiple businesses to bid against each other for a service will be a hard sell.
DEMO PIT Companies (voted by attendees)
Odesk – Changing how the world works. Helps you hire, manage, and pay workers remotely around the world. Jobs are posted for free, currently 12,250 jobs. There are over 300,000 service providers that can be matched against job requests. The providers are ranked and reviewed by employers, sort of like eBay reviews. Odesk provides real time visibility (web cam, key strokes, screen shots, projects, etc) to contract workers around the world. I really like this one.
YourVersion – Discover your version on the web. A real time discovery engine tailored to your preferences. Find news, blogs, videos, web pages, products, etc. that match your preferences. It does bookmarking, auto-tagging, thumbs up/down voting, etc. Very slick design, nice concept. However, there are LOTS of products and services out there that filter and recommend content that aren’t making any money. The technology works…people just aren’t willing to pay for the service, and advertisers aren’t paying much for the clicks either. Another one that makes sense in theory, but doesn’t payoff in practice.
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