To make money via advertising, the Internet opportunity is about 10X the mobile opportunity today in India. But the challenge is that the bulk of the money in this space goes to Google and Yahoo (with Facebook likely to be a strong contender in the future). That leaves a much smaller quantum for the local Indian companies.
In addition, the cost of selling Internet advertising is also high – should one choose not to rely on the ad networks (Google AdSense, for example). Ad Networks provide the lowest monetisation for a portal, so over time, there is little option but to build one’s own sales team. And that is an expensive proposition.
In the mobile space, the operator is the enabler for almost all of the MVAS revenue, and as much keeps the lion’s share of what end users pay. Again, this leaves much less money on the table for the content and service providers than what they would like – and what they need to build large businesses.
Is there a way out?
Continued tomorrow.
