Developing World Is a Profit Sink For Web Companies

The NYTimes is running a piece on the dilemma faced by Web entrepreneurs, particularly in social media companies: the developing world is spiking traffic but not contributing much to revenues. The basic disconnect when Web 2.0 business models meet Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East is that countries there are not good prospects for the advertisers who pay the bills. "Call it the International Paradox. Web companies that rely on advertising are enjoying some of their most vibrant growth in developing countries. But those are also the same places where it can be the most expensive to operate, since Web companies often need more servers to make content available to parts of the world with limited bandwidth. And in those countries, online display advertising is least likely to translate into results. ... Last year, Veoh, a video-sharing site operated from San Diego, decided to block its service from users in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe, citing the dim prospects of making money and the high cost of delivering video there. 'I believe in free, open communications,' Dmitry Shapiro, the company's chief executive, said. 'But these people are so hungry for this content. They sit and they watch and watch and watch. The problem is they are eating up bandwidth, and it's very difficult to derive revenue from it.' ... Perhaps no company is more in the grip of the international paradox than YouTube, which [an analyst] recently estimated could lose $470 million in 2009, in part because of the high cost of delivering billions of videos each month."

Comments

Re:Part of the online video problem . . .

[jsoderba]

The reason that Hulu is only available in the US is that international TV licensing is a nightmarish legal morass from which no man emerges fully sane.

high bandwidth

[ionix5891]

i run several large sites, all are very popular in south america, south east asia and middle east

but the bandwidth bills are huge as is in gigabits/s

what we started doing is capping speeds during peak hours to these places simply because not enough money is being made from sales and advertising to pay for it

i know net neutrality people say thats wrong but were not a charity and have to pay alot to carriers :(

Re:high bandwidth

[divisionbyzero]

This isn't a violation of net neutrality because as a site owner you could serve traffic to these locations but *choose* not to. If a provider prevented you from serving content to certain locations, etc, that would be a violation of network neutrality.

There is NO way for them to pay

[cybernanga]

Having lived for more than 2 decades in third world countries, there is more going on than you may think.

It is true that may people in developing countries do not have the funds to pay, which is why the advertisers are getting upset. However, in my opinion the biggest problem is that even when you have the funds to pay, you can't find anyone who will accept your money.

For example, how many online stores only accept Credit/Debit Cards, from their own country? PayPal is supposed to provide a solution for this, but only if you live in a western country. If you live in South America, Asia or Africa forget it, you can't use the service.

Even in the poorest developing countries there are still many individuals who have disposable income, but they are limited to spending it within their own markets, because of artificially imposed trade barriers, often set-up by the very companies that complain that they can't penetrate said market.

If you sell widgets online, and only allow payment via a Credit/Debit card with a US billing address, guess what, you will generally only make sales to people in the US. Everybody else relies on grey imports, and often the middle men\importers & smugglers will make more money than you on your own product.

I don't have a complete solution, as the topic is very complicated, but I am trying in my own tiny little way.