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Scribd's Business Model, Technology, and Social ImpactBy:Marissa CeramiThomas LeeAndrew NadeauWhat is Scribd?

Scribdis a Web 2.0 company that makes it easy to share documents online. Onefeature that makes Scribd unique is their iPaper flash viewer technology. iPaperallows any type of file, including Word (doc, docx), Excel (xls, xlsx), PowerPoint (ppt,pptx, pps), PDF (pdf, ps), Open Office (odt, odp, sxw, sxi, etc.), and Text (txt, rtf), tobe viewed in your browser while maintaining the integrity of the original document.While most document formats such as Microsoft Word files are not designed for theweb, iPaper allows these files to be more web compatible.Scribdhas 50 million monthly visitors and more than 50,000 new documents areposted every day. Kaplan Publishing recently published Dan Schawbel's new bookMe 2.0 . Other big name publishers including Random House and MIT Press arepartnering with Scribd to distribute their content. Scribd is an excellent marketingtool for publishers and authors as Scribd documents can easily be viewed and areindexed by search engines. Scribd also allows users to easily embed documents intotheir website or blog using their iPapertechnology. Scribd has been dubbed “The YouTube for Document Sharing”.Documents can be public or private. Public documents can be viewed by anyoneand are indexable by the search engines. Private documents can only be viewed bythe user and the people the user decides to share them with on Scribd. Scribd alsohas an API so that outside developers can build applications that use the iPapertechnology. There are many categories of documents on Scribdranging from books to sheetmusic & lyrics. It is also extremely easy to share these documents with the sharingtools built into the iPaper menu. Scribd generates revenue through advertisementsand actually embeds Google Adsenseinto their documents. They also have arevenue sharing program for users who publish documents that generate adrevenue.

Scribd's Business Model

Scribd'sbusiness model is based on monetizing documents that have been uploadedto the web that would not have otherwise been monetized. There are millions of Word documents, PowerPoint documents, and PDF files on the internet and there isno easy way to put advertisements in these documents to make money for thepublishers. Scribdhas designed a platform in which publishers can easily share andmonetize their documents. The Scribd platform is also designed to gain exposureand make documents easily viewable within the user's browser.

Scribd's Revenue Model

Scribdmakes its money from embedding Google Ads in their documents.Scribdshares the revenue it generates from Google Ads with the publisher of the

original document as well as Google. Scribd currently does not disclose the revenuedisbursement percentage to its publishers, but it is estimated that Scribdkeepsabout 50% and pays 50% to the publisher of the money they receive from Google.Google also does not disclose the percentage that they share with their publishers.Scribdalso has many partnerships with large publishers like The New York Times and The MIT Press. It is however unclear if Scribd is being paid by these publishers touse Scribd's technology or if Scribd lets them use their technology for free in returnfor the increased exposure and Google Adsense revenue.

Embedding Google Ads in Documents

Scribd is unique because they allow you to choose to embed Google Ads fromGoogle's Adsensecontent network into your documents. Previously, embeddingGoogle Ads into a document has not been possible, but Scribd's iPapertechnologynow has this feature. Scribd's iPapertechnology is able to read the text of theoriginal document that is uploaded. It then extracts that text and puts the plain textinto the HTML of the page with the embedded iPaperdocument. Since GoogleAdsense targets ads based on the content on the web page, Scribdis able to showrelevant ads to visitors reading the document. This is extremely important toScribd's business model because displaying relevant ads increases ad click throughrate (CTR) and therefore, revenue for Scribd and their publishers.

Increased Exposure for Documents

Scribd's business model relies on the fact that their iPapertechnology makesviewing, sharing, and reading documents easier. In the past,if you wanted to view aWord document or a PDF file you would have to have the proper software installed(Microsoft Office or Adobe Reader) and you would still have to download thedocument. With Scribd's iPapertechnology you can view the document directly inthe browser and do not have to download any additional programs or files. Thisincreases the exposure for documents that are posted on Scribd. Scribdcallsthemselves the "YouTube of documents," which means that their website is setupvery similar to YouTube in which visitors can search and tag documents. This alsoincreases the visibility and exposure of a document that is posted on Scribd.Because Scribd has over 50 million readers and 50,000 documents uploaded daily,they are starting to see network effects in which anyone who has written adocument will want to upload it to Scribd in order to gain more readers andexposure.

Search Engine Optimization

Scribdis very interesting from an SEO point of view. As mentioned previously, theyare able to extract the text from documents that are uploaded and then they put