Social Networks will have an uphill task monetizing its users’ generated content. According to an estimate by eMarketer, world wide social network ad spending by advertisers will be mere $ 2 bn in 2008 [Google’s Net Profit for one quarter]. Gone are those days of empty promises by Coke sponsoring your college theme party etc.
Many of these networks are still trying to find out what sort of Advertising works better. Coming back to India, 7 of the 20 networks operational are relying on Google’s Adsense for monetization and survival.
Google will now be forced to develop a competing platform to monetize Social Networks since not many advertisers are keen on displaying their ads on these sites. This is evident from the option given to Google’s Advertiser in Adwords user interface as shown on your left.
