Umair Haque argues that the way to beat Google (and, presumably to be the next internet company with eleventy billion dollars) is to serve ads that are more relevant. Google got part of the way there, can Ad Block Plus go farther?
Ad Blocker Plus is on the verge of turning into an open network that (finally) does the same as Google does: massively boost ad relevance, stripping out the useless junk — by factoring in whether or not people find ads useful or not. Ad Blocker plus is, almost unwittingly, making the world’s first reverse ad network. It doesn’t aggregate more ads to push — it aggregates people’s preferences about ads, so better ads can be chosen.
via How to Challenge Google (And Win) – Umair Haque – HarvardBusiness.org.
Filed under: Advertising Business Model
Absolutely. I think relevance in general — for ads, searches, subscriptions — is the next big thing. Filtering the information firehose is a task that we’re losing ground on, collectively. Spam was the first big challenge and we managed to (slowly) lick it, but we haven’t really done much since then.