The majority of the business done in the UK is via Agencies – advertiser budget is signed off before it is allocated to the various networks and sites and therefore even if they were to go under the agreement is between the network and the agency.

This lack of understanding of what the core business was actually about is far more likely the cause for the companies demise than the actions of a third party – Adrevenue was a business which made money during the “boom”, caught some lucky waves and had some good if undervalued resources.

Other than that there was little of value – publisher loyalty was actually one of the main plus points – but with comments as above its unlikely to remain that way at any new company this man is involved with.

Is that another really expensive lunch that publishers have to pay up?

Or will there be a new incentive to earn back breakfast (half the lunch) for signing up yet for the 3rd attempt?

When a few large organisations leave you carrying the can for ad campaigns already delivered but not paid for it is a difficult situation.

In the UK you are not allowed to trade if you are insolvent. So whilst we had good forthcomming ad campaigns on our books we could not trade or take the campaigns.

It is a tough situation when you spend 10 years of your life building a company like Adrevenue only to find that in an economic down turn you loose the lot.

The good news is that most of the publishers have stuck with us, when you are doing £5mill a year and paying out 55-60% to your publisher base the appreciate what they have earnt over the years – I glad the loyal ones have a pragmatic longer term view and not worried about small change like £500 quid (not even a good meal in The Imperial Hotel in New Delhi ;o)

Yes, it ’shucks’

I mean after the matrimony websites, the industry is yet to crack an original killer idea which works with the masses in India.

At the sametime adrevenue is still being driven by either direct sales to agencies or via networks/ad aggregators both of which are cyclical and dependent on multiple factors on which they don’t have much control…

I guess monetisation would move increasingly from a one time fulfilment of a view/click into a model based on lifetime value of a visitor and how a media company could enhance that relationship via content,credibility and commerce.

To be honest, ad revenues is a much maligned word – its the business engine of Google! In India, the Star’s, Zee’s and Sony’s run on Ad Revenue given that subscription sucks. I think its just become a good bashing point conversation at the moment.

Couple of questions…

You speak of “Downturn”…is that in internet media or generally in entire enconomy? And when you say 2 years, did that period start last year or this year?

Pure Indian internet players are still limited to content-heavy sites like TOI etc. Otherwise indians are just going to global sites like google, yahoo, ebay etc. Is that true? Whats the long term play for desi sites…if ad monetization won’t work?