When we think of internet search, we think of Google. And for a good reason.

Acc. to StatCounter, almost 93% of all search queries across platforms (e.g. desktop, mobile, console) is through Google.

As seen in the chart above, Microsoft Bing’s market share is a measly 3% and hasn’t really moved much in the last 10 years.

However, Search Advertising is a very lucrative business. A small market share point can mean a lot in revenue.

In spite of being a “forgotten” name in Search, Bing still generated est. $11.7 billion of revenue in 2022.

This is larger than entire social media companies like Twitter and Snapchat and very similar to the fast growing TikTok. Remember - these social media companies have hundreds of millions of engaged users who log in every day.

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Tools: Google slides and Vizzlo

Source: Statcounter, company reports, businessofapps

WSJ reported recently that OpenAI - the company behind viral AI tech like ChatGPT, Dall-E etc., is looking to sell shares at a valuation of $29B

This would make OpenAI, the 10th most valuable startup in the world.

Private companies valuations can be tough to gauge if they haven’t raised recently. To make this post, I collated info from public available media reports.

Over last 12-18 months, valuation of some of these companies has been marked down from their peak, while some others are still due for a correction:

1. Epic Games (creator of Fortnite) raised in April 2022
2. SpaceX and OpenAI are currently in talks to price their equity, and Fanatics raised recently in Dec-22
3. Shein, ByteDance (Creator of TikTok), Stripe and Databricks have already written down their peak valuations. Some recent reports show that ByteDance may be further marked down (Link)
4. Canva last raised in 2021 and is due for a correction (Note: one of Canva’s investor - Blackbird, has already written down their stake in Canva by 36% (Link)

Revolut also raised in 2021 and hasn’t marked down its valuation yet. This is quite possible in 2023, specially as 2 other large Fintech startups Klarna and Checkout.com has had a huge markdown (Klarna from $45.6B to $6.7B and Checkout $40B to $11B)

While there are many impressive companies on this list, OpenAI really stands out

1. Together with Revolut, it's the youngest company in the list
2. It has very few employees. Less than 500 according to most sources. All others have thousands of employees
3. It has very little revenue - though the company projects to hit $1B revenue by 2024 (Link)

Note that the industry mentioned in the post is indicative to give an idea of their core businesses. In some cases, e.g. Fanatics, they engage in a lot of different businesses related to Sports fans.

If you like this, you can find more charts / data stories like this in my newsletter.

Source: Publicly Available Media reports

Tools: Google Slides and Vizzlo

Agreed. In terms of free cash flow per user..it's pennies and cents to the company

Yeah their ad targeting products were very effective + they also went way more aggressive in harvesting user data from outside the FB platforms. Their ARPU is really strong b/c of that.

I'm curious to see how monetization suffers (if at all) after the IDFA changes from Apple.

Haha...True.

Pinterest should earn more for their users as it lends itself so well to shopping.

Really needs to do something about it.

Few things stand out for me from the above chart:

1. Despite its very large user base, Meta is miles ahead of competition in monetizing its user base. Its ARPU is almost 2x that of Twitter and 3x that of Snapchat.
2. Twitter’s ARPU growth has stagnated over the last 3.5 years and has started to decline in recent quarters. The turmoil over at Twitter post Musk’s takeover will not make this any easier.
3. Snapchat and Pinterest has a lot of catching up to do. Their ARPU is growing way too slowly for their liking.

Also, if you like this, you can find more charts / data stories like this in my newsletter.

Tools use: Google slides and Vizzlo

Data from company reports

Does it mean server hosting costs?