[Foundation-l] Left on the Table, vs. Google's serving portion

Sat Nov 6 01:20:49 UTC 2010

> Fred Bauder 
> How many billions in potential advertising revenue do we leave on
> the table each year?

	Nobody knows, because the unknown factor in such calculations
is whether Google would continue to bless Wikipedia so heavily if it
started running ads. You cannot assume that the current dominance in
search ranking would be maintained. Google can - and does - tweak
algorithmic factors, which then have profound effects on what types of
sites rank highly.

	If you seriously want to make a reasonable estimate, take
a look at the closest similar types of sites which are commercial - e.g.
about.com, answers.com, Weblogs Inc., Mahalo.com, Gawker (sorry!), etc.
That would give a ballpark figure in terms of current Google practice.

	Skip the feel-good stuff about the community only being
willing to do free work for an unsullied cause. The veritable
Co-Founder Himself has a $14 million dollar venture-capital backed
endeavor (Wikia) based on the theory that such an idea is false. Are
you calling him and his marquee investors stupid? :-)

	In fact, Wikia's relative lack of profitability (it may be
slightly profitable, but it's certainly not a money machine) is a
pretty good indication that such monetization is quite difficult. Even
with all the marketing and public relations advantages that Wikia
gains via a "halo effect" from Wikipedia's prominence, it still
doesn't rake in big bucks.

	So slapping a Google Ads box on many pages doesn't print money.
Given the risk that it could actually kill the goose that lays golden
"SERPs", err, eggs, it won't happen.

-- 
Seth Finkelstein  Consulting Programmer  http://sethf.com
Infothought blog - http://sethf.com/infothought/blog/
Interview: http://sethf.com/essays/major/greplaw-interview.php