Evan’s Odeo in Businessweek
With his new company Odeo, Williams and partner Noah Glass aim to build a one-stop Web site where the masses can find and subscribe to podcasts, and create new podcasts with ease. Odeo will then help match advertisers to the newly created podcasts or let podcasters charge a subscription fee to listeners.
And Philip’s AdBrite in the LA Times:
He persuaded Sequoia Capital, the blue-chip Silicon Valley venture capital firm that backed such companies as Google Inc. and Apple Computer Inc., to invest $4 million in his method of placing ads on websites. He moved from New York City to San Francisco with dreams of turning AdBrite into the next billion-dollar company.
In some ways, Kaplan’s story is the story of the Internet: Both worked through their youthful indiscretions and are coming back in a more sure-footed, sober way. After 10 years of booms and busts, the Internet has proved itself a medium capable of generating billions of dollars from the kinds of ads Kaplan is selling.
Some data I’ve collected indicates that in the U.S. from 1925 to 1999, advertising expenditure has been roughly constant at 2.5% of GDP. In the U.K. over the same period, advertising’s share of GDP has also been roughly constant, at about 1.7% of GDP (see “Some Economics of Personal Activity and Implications for the Digital Economy” at galbithink.org). These facts suggest that while new businesses might succeed in attracting ad revenue, the economy-wide potential for growth from such business is likely to be quite limited.