What do search advertising and banking have in common? Both are close to the money, and capture a disproportionate share of their value chain:
A banker sells a business that thousands of people have helped build, and some of those people created much more value than the banker, but she takes more of the money. Why? Because she’s close to the money, it’s easier to connect her performance to the outcome. Whereas the engineer who came up with the product that built the business, harder to say. Was it really him, or the sales guy? Or was the product inevitable? And so on.
Same thing with search, just like in the previous post. It’s close to the transaction, so its role is obvious.
So lesson 1, all other things being close to the money is good business.
And lesson 2, if you’re not close to the money you need to work that much harder to prove your value.
