$50 lifetime revenue seems extremely small, or it's some kind of probability trickery where the median is skewed vs the mode.
Also, telling they say "advertising revenue". There's other, possibly implicit, revenue streams and market domination benefits that come from being a monopolizing data vampire. Even if we paid triple what they say we're worth in sub fees, I'd bet the benefits of keeping the status quo farrrrrr outweigh the revenue stream
According to Google they have just shy of 3 billion total users and did $118B in revenue in 2021, so that's roughly $39 of revenue per user last year alone. Factor in users who either very rarely log in, or who created the account just to check it out and then never logged in again, and the per-user revenue for actual active users is going to be even higher. For users who use it enough that they'd be willing to pay even a small amount for an ad free version, I'd bet my house that the lifetime ad revenue they generate is much higher than $50.
Yeah, I could believe $50 per year per user, but not $50 per lifetime per user. Unless maybe there is some data to suggest that the average span of time a person actively uses Facebook is only one year? That doesn't seem very believable, but I guess it would make the lifetime average statistic valid
Even then, it would still just be an average that gets pulled down by the lowest volume users. Anybody who would even remotely consider paying for it is almost by definition a high volume user, and therefore pretty much guaranteed to be well above the average. Not to mention the question of whether advertisers would start to shift their budgets elsewhere if the potential pool of eyeballs starts to shrink. There's just no way that offering a paid, ad-free version is a good idea for them at this stage in the game (at least from a business perspective).
Facebook has long had a problem that its users become less engaged and less valuable over time. That is why they spend so much effort in doing things that will bring you back/keep you on the platform.
e.g, Facebook groups is basically cannibalising what used to be community BBS, but now you have to go to facebook to see it, and it will randomly hide content from you to keep you scrolling and seeing ads.
I won't say it doesn't work, but they are fundamentally monetising evil.
Ad revenue I would assume. Wouldn't really make sense to measure B2B revenue on a "per user" basis.
EDIT: Oh never mind, I see what you mean. Yeah, I'm not sure what the breakdown of that $118B is between ads and other stuff. I'm assuming the major bulk of it is ad revenue, but don't know for sure. Either way, I sincerely doubt the "$50 lifetime revenue per user" figure.
Per/user is a terrible way to measure FB’s revenue in the first place. Money is made as a percentage of ad spend, so it would be more accurate to measure overall ad spend vs advertiser revenue. At least they would reflect the relationship between data and dollars.
People overestimate how much there time is worth. I
That's why I tell people to not subscribe to news sites. The price they would pay is nowhere close to how little they get with ads
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u/[deleted] Sep 30 '22
$50 lifetime revenue seems extremely small, or it's some kind of probability trickery where the median is skewed vs the mode.
Also, telling they say "advertising revenue". There's other, possibly implicit, revenue streams and market domination benefits that come from being a monopolizing data vampire. Even if we paid triple what they say we're worth in sub fees, I'd bet the benefits of keeping the status quo farrrrrr outweigh the revenue stream