Comment by hobofan
9 hours ago
If they are able to actually successfully pivot into ads as a business model, it's very easy to justify the valuation: Just look at Google/Meta.
I'm personally skeptical that they are able to pull off ads, at least on the short timescale they likely need to. They more or less have to nurture/disrupt a whole SEO industry, and the way big corps allocate advertising budgets are very slow to shift (many are still struggling to find their footing in social media advertising).
> If they are able to actually successfully pivot into ads as a business model, it's very easy to justify the valuation: Just look at Google/Meta.
Ads are not just a switch one can turn on. Firstly, you need to build a decent ad serving/targeting/pacing engine. Secondly (and more importantly) you need to hire a shed ton of sales people (in many, many geos) and then ramp them all up (difficult if you're building the product at the same time).
And then you need to keep at it for 3-5 years minimum before you'll finally get the bigger/more conservative brands/agencies/etc to buy in properly.
At that point, you'll make decent money, after accounting for all of the costs. I'm not sure that you'll make enough money, but it would definitely stanch their bleeding a little.
tl;dr if they haven't already built this ad product, it's unlikely to make a material difference before 2030.
Why should they give a fuck about the SEO industry? You think Google "nurtures" the SEO industry? They're selling ads to businesses and displaying them to consumers. SEO folks are just parasites in the system.
Yes of course Google nurtures the SEO industry. The first hit I get when I google SEO is a best practice site from Google themselves.
The person/department/agency that is responsible for doing SEO is the same one that is responsible for spending ad money on Google. It's in their best interest to internally sell "search" (no matter if organic/inorganic) as a good advertising channel and that creates great stickiness for Google's ad business.