The Facebook Fallacy – Technology Review:
“The daily and stubborn reality for everybody building businesses on the strength of Web advertising is that the value of digital ads decreases every quarter, a consequence of their simultaneous ineffectiveness and efficiency. The nature of people’s behavior on the Web and of how they interact with advertising, as well as the character of those ads themselves and their inability to command real attention, has meant a marked decline in advertising’s impact. “
What a great read. This could have been written eleven years ago, just before the first dot com bubble burst.
Everything hums along great for a while, sure. And a few people get rich every time. But for the vast majority of people, the notion that web advertising is sustainable as your sole source of income long term is just silly. The inside players in the Valley know this; they just don’t want everyone else to figure that out until it’s too late.
Facebook may very well come up with some master stroke, some bold new idea to start making a sustainable business in the long term. But thus far we haven’t seen any real evidence of that.
