“Re-Thinking the Network Economy: The True Forces That Drive the Digital Marketplace” by Stan Liebowitz, AMACOM (2002).

Chapter 6: “Can Advertising Revenues Support the Net?” Read 6 Intro and 6 part D.

Liebowitz’s comments on the online advertising business, written shortly after the dot com crash, are notably bearish. He argues that the most feasible path towards profitability for internet services is subscription-based models. But advertising is the primary driver of revenues from internet content creation today – what was Liebowitz missing? Does access to enormous volumes of user data change the story Liebowitz is telling?

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