“The easy money in keyword advertising is gone,” says Ryan, but there are “Clearly 10 years of growth ahead for the internet” and no “The bubble is not back!” he says. Gone are the days when the biggest question he faced was “When will you start to make money” Now he believes the internet is “under-hyped” simply because the typical US exit route for founders is by acquisition rather than IPO. This lack of IPOs gives the sector less publicity oxygen than it deserves. “Whether it’s e-commerce, advertising or publishing, the web is working very well!” he states confidently.
American Kevin Ryan today presented a review of 10 years of internet alongside fellow French ‘internetpreneur’, Marc Simoncini the PDG (CEO) of 22-country Meetic. Speaking in perfect French – but with English slides – he addressed a smallish audience in AdTech terms – but significantly larger than the earlier Search Engine Strategies Paris, at the Paris launch of
AdTech’s European roll-out. Simoncini’s role was to interject a French view of the Ryan presentation. Unlike SES, AdTech also provided headphones for the simultaneous interpreting of the French language presentations.
Kevin Ryan is not just a web addict, he’s serial business founder who simply can’t put founding businesses down and would create many more businesses “If I had the time.” He did reveal that he has yet another launch coming in 2007 and that typically he builds a business for 9 months – builds the initial team of 15 – then involves Venture Capitalists. Former CEO
of Double click and founder of HotJobs (sold to Yahoo), ShopWiki, Panther Express and Music Nation, he sees “Opportunities everywhere if it takes someone more than a minute to achieve something.”
Both Simoncini and Ryan were very critical of media publishers who simply can’t create web sites and have to pay exhorbitant web site acquisition costs simply to avoid, as Simoncini says, “Hitting a brick wall”. Both men saw diminishing revenues and performance for media owners and Ryan observered the rush to acquire from media players amongst which he included Google and Yahoo. Says Ryan, “The traditional big media players didn’t invent anything by themselves”. He also highlighted a noticable decline in US radio advertising.
The future is IPTV and mobile according to Ryan who sees growth in keyword advertising not much above 15% – but he expects the IPTV sector to explode to ten times its current size very quickly. “Marketing is becoming less important,” according to Ryan, because “when the consumer controls the publicity – the product becomes all important”.
AdTech Paris Ad Tech Paris runs today and tomorrow at the Palais des Congrès, Paris.
Andy Atkins-Kruger
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Thank you Andy for this summary of AdTech Paris’ opening session.
One other noticeable thing to add: Marc Simoncini’s anecdotes about his acquisition of eFriendsNet in China !