Assume you treat an ad keyword as an equity stock. There are slight differences in the cost for advertising for that keyword across various locations (Zurich vs Delhi) and various channels (Facebook vs Google) . You get revenue if your website ranks naturally in organic search for the keyword, and you have to pay costs for getting traffic to your website for that keyword.
An arbitrage position is defined as a riskless profit when cost of keyword is less than revenue from keyword. We take examples of Adsense and Adwords primarily.
There are primarily two types of economic curves on the foundation of which commerce of the internet resides-
1) Cost Curve- Cost of Advertising to drive traffic into the website (Google Adwords, Twitter Ads, Facebook , LinkedIn ads)
2) Revenue Curve – Revenue from ads clicked by the incoming traffic on website (like Adsense, LinkAds, Banner Ads, Ad Sharing Programs , In Game Ads)
The cost and revenue curves are primarily dependent on two things
1) Type of KeyWord-Also subdependent on
a) Location of Prospective Customer, and
b) Net Present Value of Good and Service to be eventually purchased
For example , keyword for targeting sales of enterprise “business intelligence software” should ideally be costing say X times as much as keywords for “flower shop for birthdays” where X is the multiple of the expected payoffs from sales of business intelligence software divided by expected payoff from sales of flowers (say in Location, Daytona Beach ,Florida or Austin, Texas)
2) Traffic Volume – Also sub-dependent on Time Series and
a) Seasonality -Annual Shoppping Cycle
b) Cyclicality– Macro economic shifts in time series
The cost and revenue curves are not linear and ideally should be continuous in a definitive exponential or polynomial manner, but in actual reality they may have sharp inflections , due to location, time, as well as web traffic volume thresholds
Type of Keyword – For example ,keywords for targeting sales for Eminem Albums may shoot up in a non linear manner after the musician dies.
The third and not so publicly known component of both the cost and revenue curves is factoring in internet industry dynamics , including relative market share of internet advertising platforms, as well as percentage splits between content creator and ad providing platforms.
For example, based on internet advertising spend, people belive that the internet advertising is currently heading for a duo-poly with Google and Facebook are the top two players, while Microsoft/Skype/Yahoo and LinkedIn/Twitter offer niche options, but primarily depend on price setting from Google/Bing/Facebook.
It is difficut to quantify the elasticity and efficiency of market curves as most literature and research on this is by in-house corporate teams , or advisors or mentors or consultants to the primary leaders in a kind of incesteous fraternal hold on public academic research on this.
It is recommended that-
1) a balance be found in the need for corporate secrecy to protest shareholder value /stakeholder value maximization versus the need for data liberation for innovation and grow the internet ad pie faster-
2) Cost and Revenue Curves between different keywords, time,location, service providers, be studied by quants for hedging inetrent ad inventory or /and choose arbitrage positions This kind of analysis is done for groups of stocks and commodities in the financial world, but as commerce grows on the internet this may need more specific and independent quants.
3) attention be made to how cost and revenue curves mature as per level of sophistication of underlying economy like Brazil, Russia, China, Korea, US, Sweden may be in different stages of internet ad market evolution.
For example-
A study in cost and revenue curves for certain keywords across domains across various ad providers across various locations from 2003-2008 can help academia and research (much more than top ten lists of popular terms like non quantitative reports) as well as ensure that current algorithmic wightings are not inadvertently given away.
Part 2- of this series will explore the ways to create third party re-sellers of keywords and measuring impacts of search and ad engine optimization based on keywords.
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