2. Software price compression reality.
The presence of so many software companies is a sign of market immaturity. Because of this over saturation, the software license (or per-player subscription) pricing is steadily gravitating towards lower single digits and eventually will hover over “zero.”
This accelerating price compression will compel software companies to be more creative and aggressive in the face of imminent elimination by market forces. Only a few will remain. Most probably it will end up being a 2- or 3-horse race for each network type (aka industry verticals).
The software provider who has enough cash and vision to ‘grab the ad space real estate’ by offering a high-quality ad-sales-enabled network management platform to networks for free and charge for some other services or products (e.g. ad transaction fees) might reap the benefits of market dominance in the long run.
In the meantime, networks can reduce the RFP research period by considering only established software vendors with a proven track record of running successful networks in their specific industry segment. Wrong choice of software is likely to be an expensive mistake due to the high costs of converting to another platform in the future.