This really puts things in to perspective. Subscription startups looking to get some percentage of the population to pay $10 a month can never reach the scale of google advertising when they are extracting nearly that much value on average from every single person.

Well that's part of the problem inherent with the subscription model, isn't it?

Google can make >$100 a click for ads on mortgages or insurance keywords, but subscription models are locked in to revenue that doesn't scale with the category of use - unless they become some sort of affiliate service.

A friend of mine bought a house from a cost-per-click ad...

If the seller has $1000 per click, that's really going to distort the market...

If you are comparing with Netflix, then you should consider family accounts, where many people share that $8/m

> P.S. please feel free to correct my figures!

Presumably the value of advertising is highly correlated to the amount of money you spend (on things you have some choice over).

Disposable income is a strongly skewed distribution (across countries, within most countries).

An average won't help you much if you want too know how much Google makes off you!

That $100/person isn’t spending by individual users. They are spent by companies advertising and paying for clicks.

Guess how many times an average person clicks on an ad knowingly/unknowingly.

So: who is giving the money to the companies that they use for advertising?

other companies ?

Consumers...

Tax payers

That's really not relevant.

Perhaps in the sense that we all (indirectly) pay the tax (i.e. cost) of advertising, whether we use Google or not.

Ok, I know.

_What are_ consumers?