Ben Gilbert: prediction

Transcript context

…This us up there with one of the best quotes on Acquired of all time. She was sitting there with Mark late at night, and when they arrived at this plan of we are going to forego a lot of desktop revenue to basically bet it all on figuring out mobile revenue, she said, “Well Mark, nobody can fire you, and only you can fire me. If you’re in, I’m in. We buckled our seatbelt and we said, ‘here we go.’” It’s amazing. That can only happen in a founder-controlled company, and it really did force them to figure out mobile advertising. If they really are saying, this is the new first class product, this is where we’re going to point all advertisers toward, if they’re wrong on that, they’re wrong across the whole board, because if ads suck on mobile, since it’s the only thing and it’s filling up your whole screen, user engagement is also going to nose dive. It’s basically a be at all moment where the ads are front and center, so they must be good. It is essential for the mobile product and thus your company for them to be good. User’s attention will be pointed at these ads like no other ads you have ever run before. Actually, the flip side of this is it ended up being the best thing ever for the company. Because the ads are front and center, the value per ad is actually higher. They ended up creating a much, much more valuable ad unit than they ever had on desktop purely because of this incredible attention on them when you’re scrolling in feed on mobile. Necessity is the absolute mother of invention. Totally. You have no choice but to do your best work, and boy did it work out fabulously. Ben, nobody can fire you. And I guess you can’t fire me either. But either way, if you’re in, I’m in.…

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