I had missed this altogether, but apparently Carl Icahn has invested “tens of millions of dollars” in HowStuffWorks. HSW was launched by Marshall Brain and is arguably one of the better sites out there, one that, well, does not make the Web look dumb. Of course, when your last name is Brain, you can’t exactly launch HotorNot.com - now can you (though technically, Hot Or Not is a smashing success in itself).
Point is, HSW was eventually acquired by Convex Group, which is Jeff Arnold’s brainchild. Mr. Arnold might not strike a chord with many, but he was the lad behind Web MD. In Fact, Web MD was not even his first success, having sold a medical company for a cool $25M before launching Web MD.
So it is somewhat fitting that Arnold has been aggressively pursuing new opportunities, and when it comes to new ones, China is unlike anything else. Stat for you?
In 2010, online advertising will be a $30 billion industry (eMarketer: $25B, Morgan Stanley: $32B) in the US whereas Asia - powered by China - will be a $110 billion one, according to PWC. Mind you, PWC pegs the US market at $60B… so go figure.
Asia leads all continents in terms of Internet users but the USA is number one when ranking users by country. Of course, the world’s penetration is only 17%, whereas the US is already at 70%
This all might explain why investors have now poured in a whopping $50M in HowStuffWorks’ Chinese venture.
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January 30th, 2007 at 7:03 am
where did you get the $110 bn of online ad spend by 2010 from? Even more amazing is that you say that the $110BN will be powered by china…
i can probably believe that asian online ad spending may reach that because of Japan/Korea (but even that is doubtful)…however, there is no way that china is a serious driver of that spend…
January 30th, 2007 at 7:48 am
Trust me Adam, I was floored, but here is where I got it:
http://www.watchmojo.com/web/blog/?p=699
(I’ll add link in the original post)