There appears to be a correlation between advertising & loans funded. Advertising expenses increase, loans funded increase. Advertising decreases & eventually, loans funded will decrease also.
For October, loans funded were $3,027,177, which for prosper is nice to know. Although their advertising cost for the 3rd quarter had dropped down to $171,141, either their prior high dollar advertising had some staying power, or they are building brand recognition.
As far as advertising expenses go, their referral program appears to have been one of the best bang-per-buck. The referrer got 0.5% of the loan amount.
http://prosperlending.blogspot.com/2007/06/prosper-referral-program.htmlThis is far better than their going 3.4% expense on advertising per dollar brought in.
If they could only keep the program out of the hands of spammers & link spammers, it would seem the program would pay off for now.
Using "groups" as an advertising platform failed. For the most part, they competed with each other to suck in people who had already arrived at the Prosper website. Plus it encouraged group leaders to pump & dump loans.