Netflix vs Amazon: The display ad battle for our streaming bucks

In a world where 95 percent of Americans pay for more than one streaming service, it’s hard to remember a time when we weren’t all hooked on video-on-demand (VoD). But it hasn’t always been this way. Netflix may not have been the world’s first streaming company, but it was certainly the platform that brought the business model to the mass market. Yet for the first decade of its existence, the company didn’t even do streaming — it was a...

Phil Norris

Business Models - 6 min read

The Business of Display Reloaded: Niche Viral Sites

How long will it take until people are sick of reading articles about Kim Kardashian’s weight fluctuations? Or articles that list the “10 Signs You Know You’re a Millennial”? Or the once-loved-but-now-hated, “She Walked Her Dog. You’ll Be Shocked At What Happened Next”? A really long time, apparently. One of our most popular blog posts ever was The Business of Display Part 2: Viral Quiz Sites and Click Arbitrage. That post showed how advertisers were making money through ad arbitrage...

Bradley Nickel

Business Models - 4 min read

The Business of Display Part 4: Information Products

Back in 2010, Google CEO Eric Schmidt quoted this amazing statistic: We create as much information in two days now as we did from the dawn of man through 2003 And the data backs this up. In just one day, Google receives over 3.5 billion search queries, 269 billion emails are sent and over 4.75 billion pieces of content are shared on Facebook. What all this boils down to is that people are hungrier than ever for more content....

Bradley Nickel

Business Models - 14 min read

The Business of Display Part 3: Nutraceuticals

Not too long ago the titles that dominated news headlines included words like: Baby boomers, medical debt, dismantling Obamacare… There’s no doubt that the increased uncertainty around healthcare costs has more people worrying about their current and future health situation. This, combined with the increasing awareness behind preventive medicine, has made people seek out alternatives. Nutraceuticals have been around for years and people continue to turn to them as a remedy for countless ailments. Nutraceuticals are pills, powders, and...

Bradley Nickel

Business Models - 7 min read

The Business of Display Part 2: Viral Quiz Sites and Click Arbitrage

The funny thing about business models is that the ones people usually complain about and hate the most are the ones that actually work. And oftentimes you don’t have to look any further than your Facebook Newsfeed to see what people share to discover new, working business models. One model that gets a bad wrap is click arbitrage — also called pay per click (PPC) arbitrage. This is when you buy cheap clicks and then sell them to make...

Bradley Nickel

Business Models - 12 min read

The Business of Display: Lead Generation For Contractors

“You mean those damn pop-ups that break my concentration while I’m playing internet poker?” That was my uncle’s response when I told him about a new niche of sites that help service businesses — contractors specifically — find more customers through display advertising. My uncle runs a successful heating and air conditioning business (“hvac” is the industry term) in rural Wisconsin. They do good business and find most customers through billboards, the yellow pages and word of mouth. He...

Bradley Nickel

Business Models - 6 min read