Attention | Board of Innovation - Business and revenue model innovation

The business of attention selling: MyAttn.com

by Nick With 1 comment

What is the monetary value of one’s attention? That is the main problem MyAttn.com tries to solve. They offer an auction platform to those who have such a busy life that their inboxes fill up to a level that they’re unable to handle the load of daily messages. As a result many emails remain unread. MyAttn gives emailers the opportunity to place a bid for the valuable attention of the receiver. Those who place the highest bids will have more chance that the busy reader will open their emails first. By opening the highest bids, the receiver could make a few dollars. Although the revenue model of MyAttn.com isn’t clear, we may expect that they take a small commission per transaction. revenue model example of flattr.com

Attention auctions aren’t new. We see them in a variety of industries. But somehow paying for attention feels unethical. In the start-up scene for instance young entrepreneurs pay big loads of money for a few minutes of attention of busy VC’s. This activity, paying to pitch for investors, receives lots of critique these days. But in the end, attention selling in times of information overload remains a ‘good’ business concept. On the other hand, MyAttn.com isn’t the best format to do so.

Posted on April 3, 2010 in Internet & media Read more

Taatu and Virtua Gym on Pitcharena.com

by Nick With no comments

Following our previous post on wantz.it and tweetag, two other social applications that presented during Pitch Arena were Taatu and Virtua Gym. For these two ventures we also briefly described their business model. We didn’t go in depth, but mapping out the four social applications gaves us the possibility to quickly compare them with each other. Taatu is already active for several years and relies on a more complex business model than Virtua Gym.

Taatu

Taatu relies on two big revenue loops in their business system. First of all they offer a 3D chat experience to their user base, an active crowd of youngsters. The attention of this group is sold to advertisers who can create branded content and events inside the 3D world of Taatu. Another stream of revenue comes from many small micro-payments inside their virtual world. Users can buy virtual items that will extend their community experience. Also, the users of taatu can create goods that others can buy, which leads to a virtual economy. Different to other virtual economies, the virtual currency can’t be exchanged to dollars. Money can therefore only be transferred from the users to Taatu company.

Virtua Gym

During their 8 minute pitch shown below, the two brothers behind Virtua Gym describe the different business models that they are using. Since they are still in a very early stage, it difficult to determine which part of their business concept will become their most important revenue stream. Once they have built up their service towards gym users, they will have an interesting user base to sell to niche advertisers.

This leads to a typical free advertising based business model where the basic service is offered for free in exchange for advertising. Many online services try to rely on this business concept but only a few of them manage to become sustainable. A large user base, even in a niche topic is vital to attract large advertisers. Therefor Virtua Gym is working to add an experience on top of their service where users can have an off-line but real-time sport competition against other people.

Posted on June 5, 2009 in Entertainment & tourism Read more

The Business Model behind In-Game Advertising

by Philippe With 2 comments

Traditionally game publishers like Electronic Arts, Nintendo, and Ubisoft, sell their games for a fixed price including profit. This is known as the basic Product Sales business model or Experience Sales business model. From this basic transaction, a lot of companies look for new value propositions and revenue streams to add. In-Game Advertising is a [...]