Software is Eating the Digital Advertising Business. Software is king.
Adam Rifkin stashed this in Software!
Stashed in: Marc Andreessen, Yahoo!, Content is king.
Tod Sacerdoti of Brightroll explains:
Yesterday, Yahoo! reported earningsand released undeniable data about the growing impact that advertising technology companies are having on the company. Display ad revenue (ex-TAC) was down by 12%, the price for a display ad was down 11% and the number of ads sold was down 2%.
So, what is happening? In short, software is eating the digital advertising business.
A year ago, Marc Andreessen wrote anessay in the Wall Street Journal entitled, “Why Software is Eating The World.” Few outside of the advertising technology industry realized this inevitable transfer of value from traditional companies to software companies included the media business and notable internet players such as Yahoo!.
Now that large public companies are beginning to miss their display numbers, the broader market is starting to take notice of the following trends:
Software is King (not Content). The two largest sellers of online advertising are Google and Facebook -- two companies that are software companies at their core and produce no content (although one can argue users add content to their platforms). The traditional companies that produce content (WSJ, People, CNN, Disney) and the internet companies that produce content (AOL, Yahoo!, Microsoft) are all losing share. Yahoo! is particularly vulnerable in mobile and video, two categories in which they have insignificant owned and operated inventory to sell.
2:57 PM Jul 19 2013