Ben Gilbert: belief

Transcript context

…If you have a thin pool of advertisers, and several folks I talked to at Google made this point to me that if Google had come out of the gates with the AdWords business model in all of its glory that it ultimately became, it would’ve been very hard to bootstrap from a cold start, because you would’ve had this inventory problem. You wouldn’t have been able to deliver the magical, high quality ad experience because you would’ve had a very thin inventory of advertisers. You almost had to bootstrap it up how they did, and then onboard this other supply into the marketplace to get deep liquidity. It’s funny. I just want to pause for one second. When you say magical, there’s nothing magical about search ads, but I think you’re right that they’re the least offensive. They’re the most likely to be what I’m looking for without giving me any delight whatsoever. Sorry. I meant magical from an economic standpoint. It is the most magical economic transaction I think ever known man.…

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