User Engagement = Money ...Literally

No, I am NOT going to pull out another seemingly vague ROI calculator now to monetize the value of user experience. I think that phase is long gone where the User Experience Professionals have to justify the ROI to the client / their boss before they can spend some money on enhancing the user experience of the company website. If you are reading this, and still think UX does not bring in real money, this is all you need to do to realize it. -- Look at some of the most successful products of the recent years - Facebook, Google, Myspace...... and their revenue models

Now all these companies have hugely popular services, which are FREE to use. It does not take too much of thinking to realize that the revenues come from advertizing. If you like your stats,here it is. 98%.. (thats right!!) of Google's revenues come from Advertising. The pay per click 'Ad words' netted $21 billion in 2008! Now what does it have to do with User Experience?

To answer that, first thing we need to do is look at the models that the succesful companies like Facebook (for instance) use to create these payper click campaigns. In simple terms, they just observe the usage patterns/ web behaviour , and analyze your social network data (who you are connected in the network, your influence in your network etc), followed up with targeted advertisements when something you say (maybe on someone's wall) or do matches one of the predefined keywords. Now the possibility of the ad succeeding is far higher than a blind ad. Neat! Now what is the work involved here for Facebook? Create a free enviroment where millions of people like to spend their time, actively playing games, communicate with each other through posts, status messages, associate with groups, organizations etc......... Simply put, Facebook has been making money by selling users' engagement in their site. Does there need to be a stronger case for user experience?