For the new comers a flat fee pricing is applied also known as Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) “The amount of monthly revenue that is highly likely to continue in the future. This revenue type is predictable and stable, thanks to subscription contracts and historical customer retention rates”, as Vindicia’s guide states. Additionally there is the online stock exchange option where there the subscriptions are applied. Based on Vindicia’s Best practice guide for online business, “subscriptions share the same basic tenets: Companies periodically charge customers for a product or service according to a predefined cost and schedule. The two major variations in the terms are: Duration between charges — the billing frequency affects how digital businesses retain and acquire customers. Type of customer access — this condition more directly affects pricing. For example, digital businesses that adopt a freemium model must balance the features and value between the free and paid versions. Summarizing in.gr has revenue streams mostly from online advertizing with CPC, CPM and flat fee pricing, through revenue sharing and subscription for the stock exchange section. Revenue sharing is also known as Cost per Acquisition or Cost per Sale, Cost per Lead (CPA, CPS, and CPL). In general is more sales based model and therefore it is preferable option for the advertisers but not preferred from the publishers aspect.
Taken into consideration the long history of the portal and the creditability of the supporting group of companies, in.gr could easily introduce some targeted goods for online shopping. In other ways I strongly believe that in.gr must invest to a new type of revenue stream and is no other than e-commerce as stated at webopedia.com “Often referred to as simply ecommerce (or e-commerce) the phrase is used to describe business that is conducted over the Internet using any of the applications that rely on the Internet, such as e-mail, instant messaging, shopping carts, Web services, UDDI, FTP, and EDI, among others”. Definitely due to the audience should be focused on manhood products, such as car products, electronic gadgets and wellness. On a longer term it must approach also broader audience with more “generic” products.
newsbeast.gr
One of the upcoming rivals in the domestic online information business is the www.newsbeast .gr. it is a twenty four hour news site, with several categories as politics, global news, lifestyle etc. According to Alexa.com has a global traffic rank of 3.425 and it is the 16th most popular Greek site with reputation score of 2.737. Traffic statistics clearly show the growth of the site since late 2010 and a steady overall growth (chart 2).
Chart 2
In terms of internet reach, has a percentage of 0.04% until 22/5/12 which shows a +11.5% rise for the three month period. The percentage of site visits from search engines it is close to 4%, with top keywords: teras, eidhseis and san shmera. The audience is very close to the one of in.gr, it is mainly represented by ages of 25-44 years old, which are mainly males with no children, and have some college education and browsing location mainly from their workplace. The majority of the visitors are mainly suspected that are located in Greece by 90% and followed by 1.7% from the US. Vats the click stream is derived from google.gr by 11.78% following is facebook.com with 10.28% and downstream is again google.gr by 13.8% followed by facebook.com by 9.26%. The bounce percentage of the site is significant almost to 30%, which means that 30% of the visitors are viewing only the central page of the site and they are not viewing the entire site or page, “bounce rate is the measurement in percentage of how many Web site visitors view only one page within your – this is the one page they entered the site on (called the entrance page or landing page”), according to webopedia.
The main revenue streams of newsbeast.gr are display advertising through banners. Mainly with CPC and CPM but also with revenue sharing, there is also one static banner which monetized through MRR or sponsorship.
The site’s search percentage has declined by 56% according to alexa’s during the last three month period; clearly this is wake up call for the upcoming competition of free blogging sites and new start ups. New entrances of online “products” must be launched on the site. These products must be based on the current audience of the site which is mainly according to alexa.com are represented by males, a revenue stream of subscriptions may be applied for access to information for finance consulting, betting agencies or trade services (forex etc.).
Sport.gr
Sport.gr is a dedicated site delivering mainly sports news and athletic information, focusing in the Greek athletic organizations but also for the foreign sports news. According to alexa’s it is ranked as 18.141 in the global list, 196th among the Greek sites with a reputation score of 1060. The daily traffic trend stats shows a significant decline since 2011 (graph 3),
Graph 3
There is also a decline in the reach by almost 1.5 units which this is translated to -9% drop and with a bounce rate of 34%. These numbers might be a result of the decreased hits from search engines which have been dropped for about 58% during the last three month period. The most popular keywords returning sport.gr as a result are: sport with 22.36%, sport fm 6.47% and sport.gr with 5.77%. Mainly the audience is represented by ages ranging from 25 to 44 years old, almost exclusive by males with moderate education and residential access for most of the visitors, by 60.9% are from Greece, following by 6.5% from Denmark, 5.9% from the US. Regarding the click stream, by 11.83% of the upstream is deriving from google.gr, 6.31% via facebook.com and 4.4% from google.com. Due to the nature of the site’s content regarding athletic and sports industry, betting sites have the majority of the web page advertisement. It is more likely that an arrangement for revenue sharing could have been established as it will be more beneficial for both sides. “In this model the advertiser pays explicitly per transaction type made by the buyer that resulted from a click on a banner impression. Payment depends either on the cost of lead, cost of sale or a percentage of the sale's revenue”, as TLV describes as revenue sharing model. One of the major disadvantages of this compensation method is that as publisher you cannot control the final sales thus you are depending on the advertisers creditability and efficacy neither on your own strong points. In order to secure the most optimal revenue streams, it is mandatory to carefully select the advertisers’ profiles and with who of them will proceed with Cost per Sales model.
One suggestion for sport.gr could be to integrate products from major athletic boutiques in order to promote them through the site. An online store could be established for that purpose. In addition collaboration with travel agencies could benefit the site’s traffic stats as many of the readers might use those services in order to attend abroad games. Also another type of ecommerce is the console game as many of the visitors mainly have both interest for athletic video games, Football, Basketball, tennis etc.
Economist.com
The online edition of economist newspaper offers international news etc. as they appear on the site’s header: world politics, Business& finance, Economics, Science & Technology, Culture, Blogs, Debate, The World 2012, Multimedia and Print Edition. In general most of the articles are sourced from the printed edition of economist, with blogs, audio & Video and the debates to be exclusive online content. Alexa.com gives economist a global rank of 1695, US rank 1306 and reputation score of 70.289. 26% of the visitors come from the US but it is also popular in UK. The daily traffic rank graph on alexa’s shows a rise in the global rank of 500 slots approximately (graph 4) with top country Namibia where it is ranked 86th.
Graph 4
Internet reach has a decline trend since 2011 and for the three month period it is 0.9%. Bounce percentage also is significantly high close to 61%.search deriving from search engines are dropped compared to 2011 by almost 10%. The site’s revenue streams are based on display advertising, subscriptions and mainly e-commerce. Display advertising is generated through banners using CPC according to iSpionage.com rated with $0.05. Subscriptions budget again based on the data provided from iSpionage.com is ranged from $308-$543 monthly. For e-commerce they have built the Economist Intelligence Unit, EIU, where you can purchase online business reports for countries, specified markets etc. there is also the Economist store where you can purchase except from the aforementioned books and reports leather products like diaries etc.
Despite the fact that ecommerce may produce sufficient revenues there is always the risk involving to manage your own inventory of goods including the costs, purchase cost, store cost etc. a very neat and modern addition to the portfolio of Economist store could be the trade of applications neither for PCs or mobile applications. These products do not have any cost for storing due to their intangible nature and with a compensation model of Cost per Sale or revenue sharing the purchase cost might be eliminated also. Applications such as stock exchange information, news delivery apps, weather forecast could be the most appropriate to start with.
Financial Times
A strong traditional competitor of the economist is the Financial Times online division. According on FT, about us segment, “FT.com has 285,475 paying FT digital subscribers and over 4.5 million registered users”. Alexa.com sets FT.com on a global rank of 1.008, US rank 743 and site’s reputation score 77.374. There is a comeback compared to 2011 traffic rank which was close to 800th (graph 5).
Graph 5
Top country for FT is the UK with a ranking of 197th, followed by Ireland with 270th. the bounce rate has been significantly declined since 2011 which was over to 75% dropped to almost 50% in the ending of the same year and has quite stable trend line until today. The audience of FT.com is mainly males with ages ranging from 35-65+ years old. With no children, good education and they access the site mostly from work. Upstream mostly comes from google.com (11.23%) following by google.co.uk (5.88%), downstream returns the almost same results.
Ft.com has an extended segment to guide the advertiser for the online display advertisement “FT.com operates a system of Tiered Audience Rates (TAR). We offer advertisers the opportunity to target three levels of audience; Tier One users are those with the most influence, budget under their control, and personal worth. Tier Two contains the next level down in the business hierarchy. Tier Three is for non-targeted campaigns: those that wish to reach the whole of our valuable audience without the need to target specific segments”, as stated in the advertisement section of the site. More detailed Ft.com for the three of tier groups use CPM model ranging from 62£ to 133£.
Definitely FT.com has a state of the art section for the online advertisement business. If we take in to consideration the site’s reputation score and the creditability, a subscription model may be a good opportunity to increase the monthly revenues of the site. Providing finance information or a collaboration with consulting agencies maybe through revenue sharing would be smart choice.
Google.com
Certainly Google has changed the way search engines seek information through the World Wide Web with their advanced formula. Despite the fact that the main page have not changed significantly through the years, Google is the number one site based on alexa’s global ranking and it is the first site in rank for the US, Iran and Bangladesh. The daily traffic rank is flat to number one since 2011 (graph 6)
Graph 6
It has an important interne reach of close to 50%, a bounce percentage of 26%. The site’s audience is consisted from the same population of males and females, ages from 18-34 years old with moderate education and with access mainly from schools or universities. Facebook.com is the number one site either preceding or leaving Google, followed by youtube.com and third is yahoo.com.
Google has a dedicated division for advertisements, mostly Google’s revenue streams are deriving from display advertising called Google Ads. There are five main subcategories of Google Ads:
1. Search Ads: with this type you are upgrading the rank that your site is being shown up on the Google’s engine.
2. Display Ads: The “Google Display Network lets you place ads on a variety of news sites, blogs and other niche sites across the internet
to reach more potential customers”
3. Video & YouTube Ads: Videos that are streamlined through the Youtube.com network.
4. TVAds: Promotion of video advertisement through a broad TV network.
5. MobileAds: Advertisemnts promotion through display advertising on application or more custom designed advertisements specific for Mobile devices.
More thoroughly Google Ads is divide in two major categories, the advertise on Google, which is the way to advertise your products or services to other sites they call it Ad Words, the other category is the make money for your site which is a way to advertise your site through the search engine of Google and it is called Ad Sense, Google Ad Sense is a free program that empowers online publishers to earn revenue by displaying relevant ads on a wide variety of online content, including: Site search results, Easily add a custom search engine to your site, and earn from ads on the search results pages. Websites, Display ads on your website that are suited to your audience's interests, and earn from valid clicks or impressions. Mobile WebPages and apps, Connect your mobile users with the right ad at the right time as they seek information on the go.
Google has almost all types of compensation methods from Display advertising with CPC, CPM, and CPS Revenue sharing to e-commerce with the android market. With the evolution of the social media sites e-commerce will play an important role to the online way of doing business. There is no doubt that Google must invest more to the e-commerce segment of the corporation, by introducing more tangible products and goods except mobile software applications. High tech products and devices could be perfect candidates for Google’s new market entry as the profile of the organization has definitely that type of profile.
Discussion
Certainly the evolution of the World Wide Web revolutionized the way of making business. The rise of social networks, e-shops and online secure transactions methods took the game even further. One of the latest trends is to promote products or services through social media networking generally known as f-commerce or social-commerce. A clear definition based on my pinion for social commerce is one on socialcommercetoday.com, “Social Commerce: A subset of electronic commerce that involves using social media, online media that supports social interaction and user contributions, to assist in the online buying and selling of products and services”. Based on a report for the role of social networks in online shopping from Stanford University they conclude “that communication between buyers is a fundamental driver of purchasing activity”. Thus because the influence between individuals may drive to increased purchases of a product i.e. if someone bought a product announced in his social network then it is highly likely that his “friends” will follow his lead and may proceed on buyings from the same online or physical store.
References
Webopedia, (2012), CPC. Retrieved from:
Webopedia, (2012), electronic commerce. Retrieved from:
Webopedia, (2012), Bounce rate. Retrieved from:
TLV Media (2012), dCPM and other common online advertising performance models. Retrieved from:
Vindicia (2012), Online Business Models “Best Practices for Online Business Models”[report]. Retrieved from:
Online advertising. (2012, May 22). Display advertising. Retrieved May 23, 2012 from:
iSpionage. (2012, May 23). Economist. Retrieved May 23, 2012 from:
Financial Times, (2012, April). FT.com. Retrieved May 23, 2012 from:
Financial Times, (2012, April). FT.com. Retrieved May 23, 2012 from:
Google, (2012). Google.com, AdWords. Retrieved May 23, 2012 from:
Google, (2012). Google.com, AdSense. Retrieved May 23, 2012 from:
Stephen Guo. (5 April, 2011). The Role of Social Networks in Online Shopping: Information Passing, Price of Trust, and Consumer Choice. Retrieved from:
by
freeda (student)
