I just landed in Las Vegas and am attending Leadscon over the next couple of days. The conference is sold out which is saying something in this down economy when most tradeshows are being down-sized or cancelled.
I'm interested in lead generation in this recessionary environment. If performance marketing is (somewhat of) a safe harbor in this environment, then there must be several businesses that are benefiting from lead generation / CPA. Digital goods/services providers are benefiting, for sure. I wonder how auto OEMs, consumer electronics providers, durable goods providers and others are leveraging the recession - notwithstanding their own specific industry problems, all of these categories would probably benefit from shifting 10-15% more of their ad spend online (from TV and other traditional media).
Some of these areas that are benefiting include:
- Incentivized rewards - TrialPay, Offerpal, Super Rewards etc. Incentivized rewards have had a great ramp in the past year, providing a solution to the monetization problem faced by social network app developers.
- Virtual goods - Facebook, Hi5 etc. have all introduced virtual goods and many social network apps vendors as well as MMOGs have embraced virtual goods wholeheartedly. Leveraging this trend, Venrock is an investor in TwoFish which is a "virtual economy data platform that harnesses powerful post-purchase intelligence to manage virtual economies for leading social, gaming, and entertainment experiences."
- Subscription businesses - Netflix, ShutterFly etc. One of the takeaways from the recent Jefferies Internet and Media conference was that "more subscription based models are likely to emerge given the current ad weakness." Based on this thesis, Venrock recently invested in Aria Systems which is a leading provider of on-demand subscription billing products.
If you are one of these companies benefiting from this recessionary environment and are at the Leadscon show, give me a ping today or tomorrow.
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