[HN Gopher] Subprime Attention Crisis
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Subprime Attention Crisis
Author : kome
Score : 28 points
Date : 2021-09-27 11:46 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (logicmag.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (logicmag.io)
| ZetaZero wrote:
| I would be happy to pay for the services I want, if I could stop
| all advertising and data mining. Imagine how much better FB could
| be if they were not trying to trap your eyeballs.
| vanderZwan wrote:
| This is a page for ordering a book. The summary suggests it is an
| _interesting_ book, but does not in and of itself reveal any new
| insights. Can anyone here comment on the actual contents of the
| book?
| eightysixfour wrote:
| I thought it was a bit meandering and never really delivered an
| "aha!" moment, but it does have a few key points which were
| interesting to read about:
|
| * The author asserts substantial portions of internet ad sales
| are fraudulent. Some ads are never displayed, some are
| displayed to click-farms, etc.
|
| * The author asserts that, over time, the effectiveness of
| online advertising is decreasing significantly. People use
| blockers, learn to scroll past them, etc.
|
| * The author asserts that the qualities that makes online
| advertising attractive, attribution and transparency, are false
| premises and that the market is exceedingly opaque and orgs
| like Google want to keep it that way.
|
| * The author asserts that much of the internet advertising
| market was built by finance experts from big banks that brought
| much of the advances of the stock market to the industry, but
| many of the problems as well.
|
| The author takes those assertions and suggests that online
| advertising is not as valuable as we currently believe it to be
| (and its value may be approaching $0), and that companies which
| make money off our attention are ticking time bombs. He
| compares the situation to the subprime housing crisis across a
| couple of different area, particularly the illusion of having a
| transparent and trustworthy market and suggests that it could
| completely wipe out the current model for internet economics as
| we know it.
|
| While I think the author makes too big of a leap, it was one of
| the first books that made me consider the probability that the
| existing internet economy may have cracks in it just like any
| other economy and it is certainly possible there's a domino
| waiting to fall somewhere.
| Supermancho wrote:
| > The author takes those assertions and suggests that online
| advertising is not as valuable as we currently believe it to
| be (and its value may be approaching $0),
|
| This is probably true for ad-networks (pure ad arbitrage) but
| keywords (Colleges), sponsored products like AMZ/Walmart, and
| other verticals will always have a market value because the
| returns are decisively measurable.
| rexreed wrote:
| From the first review I see on the Amazon page (I'm not linking,
| so I don't to pass traffic but it's very easy to find via
| search).
|
| Top review on the page that I see is 2 stars:
|
| > I don't buy it
|
| Reviewed in the United States on December 28, 2020 Verified
| Purchase The basic premise of this book:
|
| - digital advertising markets are like financial markets - since
| advertising is way overpriced there will be a bust soon - the
| bust will bring the internet down because that's how the internet
| is financed
|
| Well I don't buy it.
|
| For a start, Direct Marketers _do_ know the value of what they're
| buying. Their advertising sends people to dedicated landing pages
| where they can be tracked through the site and measured if they
| convert. Thats getting harder to do, but despite whatever amount
| of fraud or manipulation may be going on in the ad space, it's
| still roughly possible.
|
| Direct Marketers these days are not just web shop owners but many
| other kinds of data-driven business. I've personally run
| profitable websites with digital ads as the exclusive source of
| customers. And don't tell me that Booking.com (one of Google's
| biggest advertisers) or others like them don't have a very
| detailed idea of what their advertising is achieving.
|
| Then there are indeed Brand Advertisers. Mostly, they don't have
| more than a vague idea what they get from their advertising, and
| nor have they ever. They pay way above the worth because they
| can't deduce the proper value. There's the biggest problem in
| advertising, but it's not a new one and if this book had asked
| the more fundamental question, "does brand advertising even
| work?", it could have made more of a contribution.
|
| Oh, and it's a mistake to conflate display advertising with
| search advertising. It's faulty reasoning to criticise display
| advertising by showing a problem with search advertising (page
| 79) and then to rubbish search advertising by picking only search
| BRAND advertising, a small and special case.
|
| For sure there are things that need to be fixed in the digital
| advertising arena. Right now there are major government
| investigations into Facebook and Google and if there is anything
| to be done about their monopolies (there is) then the internet
| will stumble on somehow and businesses will continue to
| advertise, as they must, in whatever outlets bring them the
| eyeballs they seek.
| tusslewake wrote:
| I read the book about 2/3 through, then felt I'd gotten the
| idea. I would second a lot of these criticisms of the author's
| specific understanding of digital ad markets.
|
| My broader problem with the book was that it seemed to use up
| most of its space rooting around for a good formulation of the
| comparison contained in the title: that digital ad markets
| offer an opaque and sometimes fraudulent form of value, in much
| the same way as the real estate market hit by the 2008-2009
| mortgage security crisis.
|
| It was almost as if the author wasn't fully convinced of his
| own analogy, like he needed to keep looping back to it to add a
| few more points to really nail it down. All the while, what the
| reader cares about is why this analogy is important, not that
| it can be made!
|
| The book could have been much more effective on these counts, I
| think, if it had been shorter and better edited.
| aeternum wrote:
| >since advertising is way overpriced there will be a bust soon
|
| Is there any evidence for this? Seems pretty unlikely that
| advertising is overpriced due to the liquidity of the model.
| Marketing teams are typically very mindful of the costs and
| carefully review the ROI of each advertising channel. If
| there's a negative ROI it is generally quick and easy to
| decrease your bid for an adword or target audience.
| panax wrote:
| > _Their advertising sends people to dedicated landing pages
| where they can be tracked through the site and measured if they
| convert._
|
| But how much of this is selection bias and how much of it is
| _really_ having an impact? This reminds me of
| https://thecorrespondent.com/100/the-new-dot-com-bubble-is-h...
|
| > _Economists at Facebook conducted 15 experiments that showed
| the enormous impact of selection effects. A large retailer
| launched a Facebook campaign. Initially it was assumed that the
| retailer's ad would only have to be shown 1,490 times before
| one person actually bought something. But the experiment
| revealed that many of those people would have shopped there
| anyway; only one in 14,300 found the webshop because of the ad.
| In other words, the selection effects were almost 10 times
| stronger than the advertising effect alone!_
|
| Sure you can measure clicks and how many convert, but that does
| not necessarily measure the effect of the ad. I think most of
| the time the true effect of an advertisement is usually unknown
| (what is the difference in outcome of using the ad vs not using
| the ad?) and I suspect that in a large number of cases the
| impact of advertising is significantly overestimated. Perhaps
| people won't find out until they are forced to cut back on ad
| spending then they might realize that it isn't as important as
| they thought.
|
| https://freakonomics.com/podcast/advertising-part-2/
| rexreed wrote:
| Another top review says (after giving it 1 star):
|
| > Meandering, confused, and overall a waste of time, 'Subprime
| Attention Crisis' kicks up a big fuss but never lands the
| knockout blow it thinks it does.
|
| Comparisons with the 2008 financial crisis are overblown. This
| is essentially a personal blog post blown up in size, and
| reveals nothing that isn't already widely appreciated. In the
| midst of this, Hwang also manages to demonize paywalls without
| offering an alternative to, well, pay for the internet. And no,
| 1930's law simply doesn't apply.
|
| As an insider, I take issue with the gloss applied over the
| many people who are working to improve the ad industry. There
| are many companies that work for the betterment of ad tech.
| Citing 'explosive' blog posts on Ad Age or Digiday to the
| opposite effect is misleading -- these reports are frequently
| created by competing companies shilling their own products.
|
| Overall, the adage "nothing is as good or bad as it seems," is
| relevant to this. But the sweaty, Hawaiian-shirt wearing author
| got a little ahead of himself. Still, the cover is well done...
| rexreed wrote:
| Keep in mind I was quoting the whole review, that last bit
| about hawaiian-shirt is not my comment, it's in the review
| for anyone who might be offended.
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