etailology

Interesting article on TechCrunch about how advertisers may be facing a Googleopoly. While that’s not exactly news to many of us, TechCrunch has pulled a few interesting stats out of the report it cites*:

To equal Google-DoubleClick’s level of market concentration in the intermediary online advertising market, one single financial services company would have to own:

The top 15 Wall Street banks/asset managers;

• ~60% of the hedge fund and private equity industries;
• The New York and London Stock Exchanges;
• The two leading providers of financial analytical tools: Bloomberg and Factset;
• Two of the three national providers of credit profiles: Experian and Equifax; and
• ~60% of the Federal Reserve’s and U.S. Census Bureau’s raw market and consumer data.

Now… it’s interesting to note that virtually any business school prof will tell you that in the IT/IP/Software Biz there are really only two truly successful business models: 1) value added fees for services on essentially “free” software and 2) monopoly.

We’ve been here before with software, it’s just a bit of an adjustment to think of ads as software.

*The report is not an academic one, so it may indeed be a load of self-serving bunk.  Get’s you thinkin’ though.