“We’re Going to Have Targeted Advertising”

I’ve heard about a thousand variations of this statement which is used to explain the business model for way to many companies. Personally, I don’t believe in it. The idea is that if you build a localized mobile application or some verticalized (new word I’m using by the way) content play, you’ll be able to attract lots of advertisers to pay to be in front of those people. It’s such a long shot. Yeah, it’s worked for a handful of companies, but I’m not super interested in building a business on hope.

I’ve seen a lot of really cool concepts lately in both mobile and web that clearly will provide some value to consumers in this way. The pitch starts out great, yeah, that’s a good idea. Ok, I can see customer demand for that. But then the business model is “targeted advertising”. Homey don’t play that.

I’m looking for someone to propose a really innovative way to monetize those channels. I back the idea of targeted content channels. There is no doubt this is a trend that is going to mature, but it’s the company that figures out an innovative way to monetize it is the one that I want to get behind.