Monetizing Free Traffic That Refuses To Convert To Premium: SocialVibe CEO Jay Samit, Los Angeles (Part 6)

Sramana: You said news sites is one of your strong areas. What does a before and after picture look like in that segment?

Jay Samit: We can talk about news sites in general. One of the most traffic areas is news. That sounds silly, but it’s not. If there is a flood or hurricane that happens to be the busiest part of the website, no advertiser will advertise on those pages because nobody wants their ad up against a disaster.

The busiest parts of news sites never made money until we came along. Now right next to those disasseter stories consumers see a box that says, ‘If you would like to help, click on one of these three advertisers and they will give to money to the Red Cross.’ Of course, it can be to any cause. That has been a very effective way to monetize.

Sramana: What about business sites? How does the value proposition translate for those publications?

Jay Samit: Many publications have two categories. They either have a monthly subscription or have premium content behind a paywall. Some of the ones that were recently announced did not want to let those options be known immediately because they wanted to see how many people they could get if given the choice of all or none.

Now you will see that most of them have our type of system either labeled by us, or white labeled by us allowing you to go in and do an ad or to have discrete premium content. That works for video, music, and news sites.

Sramana: Does there need to be a paywall for you to be effective?

Jay Samit: There needs to be some value exchange.

Sramana: A lot of sites are completely free and monetized only by advertising. It does not seem that you play well there.

Jay Samit: No, because it does not pay attention to the consumer or engage the consumer. Advertisers are not getting real value out of those sites.

Sramana: What is the financial structure of the company? How much money have you raised?

Jay Samit: We are venture backed and we have raised more than $45 million to date. Our investors include Norwest, Redpoint, Pinnacle, and Jafco. We are now trying to expand globally.

Sramana: Where are you in terms of revenues?

Jay Samit: We are over $25 million in revenue.

This segment is part 6 in the series : Monetizing Free Traffic That Refuses To Convert To Premium: SocialVibe CEO Jay Samit, Los Angeles
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