[HN Gopher] The $300B Google-Meta advertising duopoly is under a...
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The $300B Google-Meta advertising duopoly is under attack
Author : acconrad
Score : 602 points
Date : 2022-09-18 18:17 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.economist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.economist.com)
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| Finally, an archive.org URL at the top instead of archive.ph.
| Nice one.
|
| The later has a "bot protection" page that looks like
| Cloudflare's but someone suggested it is not. Makes sense because
| archive.today and Cloudflare were in a spat some time ago.
| Archive.today wanted to allow monitoring of users' locations,
| e.g., via EDNS Client Subnet, but Cloudflare did not send ECS.
|
| Unlike Archive.today, Internet Archive does not try to force
| users to enable Javascript or make them solve CAPTCHAs. Nor does
| Common Crawl.
|
| It is interesting to contrast the Internet Archive (IA) with
| Archive.today. The later is vague about how it is funded and
| admits it could sell out to advertisers in the future.^1 There is
| obviously no small amount of data it could collect about user
| interests and behaviours that could be used to support
| advertising. For example, what usage data does it store, if any.
| What are the Terms of Use for that data. There are no public
| statements about any restrictions on what the website operator
| can do. The operator invites users to "Ask me anything" but
| AFAICT the website has no Privacy Policy. The operator admits it
| sends the client's IP in a X-Forwarded-For HTTP header. This is
| not something one would experience with IA. The server hosting
| the page being archived receives an IA IP address as the client
| IP address, not an IA user's IP address. IA has a Privacy Policy,
| last updated in 2001.^2 Unlike Archive.today, I feel reasonably
| confident IA wil not sell out to commercial interests but who
| knows.
|
| 1. From Archive.today's FAQ:
|
| How is the archive funded?
|
| It is privately funded; there are no complex finances behind it.
| It may look more or less reliable compared to startup-style
| funding or a university project, depending on which risks are
| taken into account.
|
| Will advertising appear on the archive one day ?
|
| I cannot make a promise that it will not. With the current growth
| rate I am able to keep the archive free of ads. Well, I can
| promise it will have no ads at least till the end of 2014.
|
| 2. YMMV, but IME but the fewer "updates" to a Privacy Policy over
| time the better.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| Correction: FAQ states client IP address (instead of
| Archive.today IP address) is sent but not in a X-Forwarded-For
| header.
|
| Archive.today FAQ:
|
| Do you preserve archivers' privacy? E.g. not disclose the
| source IP address?
|
| Yes.
|
| But take in mind that when you archive a page, your IP is being
| sent to the the website you archive as though you are using a
| proxy (in X-Forwarded-For header). This feature allows websites
| (e.g shops or the sites with weather forecast) target your
| region, not mine.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20220913195108if_/https://archiv...
| blenton wrote:
| > _The operator admits it sends the client 's IP in a
| X-Forwarded-For HTTP header._
|
| You can easily test this. You will find that, actually, it does
| not send this header. Or the client's IP address in any other
| way.
| montpeliervt wrote:
| No has mentioned Subprime Attention Crisis yet. It's worth
| reading. The whole thing is a hyper-inflated, opaque house of
| cards, and its collapse will cause a lot of pain.
| seshagiric wrote:
| I work in online search and recently expanded. In my opinion
| there are two major threats to Google and Facebook (I.e., ads
| related threats):
|
| 1. Platform power: Apple was a key supplier to Facebook in the
| sense that they provide platform driving a significant % of their
| Ads revenue. With Apple tightening privacy they have become an
| indirect but significant threat to Facebook. Google is relatively
| safe.
|
| 2. Threat of substitutes: as seen in Amazon, Ecom platforms are
| much closer to the customer. Us timer is about to make a
| purchase. I think over time Advertisers will eventually shift to
| platforms like amazon, Etsy etc so that can reach the customer
| right when they are about to make a purchase. Some what same
| appeal with snap and TikTok.
|
| Overall online ad industry will continue to flourish but will see
| big changes in who are the big players.
| xyst wrote:
| the day the ad industry dies, we will all be better off
| r00fus wrote:
| Maybe it becomes less invasive or a vector for malware, but I
| sadly don't see it dying any time soon.
| smoldesu wrote:
| What replaces it? People aren't going to host content for
| free. I hate ads too, but we have to be pragmatic about
| monetization; platforms like YouTube _literally cannot exist_
| without advertising to subsidize the insane architectural
| cost.
|
| The solution is proper oversight. We've gone too long without
| regulating advertisements, app stores and video platforms,
| and we've witnessed the consequences. It's time that we put
| the interests of the people before FAANG shareholders and HN
| pundits.
| concordDance wrote:
| > People aren't going to host content for free.
|
| Those wanting their stuff seen can pay money to host it or
| just host it on their computers/rasberry Pis
| datavirtue wrote:
| Not with the shit internet service we currently have. The
| bandwidth cost is the gatekeeper propping up youtube etc.
| If I try to serve anything with consumer internet service
| my pipe will clog or I will get shoved over to business
| class internet service. The "business class" internet
| service will soon choke also.
|
| Next step? Rent a data center and start buying contract
| lines and millions in hardware.
| oezi wrote:
| > platforms like YouTube literally cannot exist without
| advertising
|
| Why? If you consider Netflix without the cost of content
| creation, then less than 1 USD per month per user would
| cover the infrastructure cost just fine. Maybe cents
| suffice.
|
| Youtube is just one big profit center for Alphabet.
| jsnell wrote:
| YT's content isn't free. The majority of the income
| (55/45 split) from ads and Premium goes to the content
| creators. To compare, in 2021 Netflix had content
| acquisition costs of 60% of their revenue.
|
| And then on the flipside, YT has a much harder
| infrastucture problem than Netflix. There's probably like
| 1000x as much content (both new and existing), and much
| more diversity in what is being watched. That means 1000x
| more storage and transcoding, and far lower cache hit
| rates.
|
| (I've got no idea of whether/how profitable YT is. Just
| saying that if you're trying to reason about it via
| analogy to Netflix, you've got the directionality wrong
| on both of the issues.)
| esperent wrote:
| > I've got no idea of whether/how profitable YT is.
|
| YouTube: 20 billion USD profit in 2021 on 28 billion
| revenue
|
| Netflix: 12 billion USD profit in 2021 on 30 billion
| revenue
|
| There's a reason why people call YT a money printer. And
| I just heard they are trialling showing five(!) ads
| before each video now.
| jsnell wrote:
| > YouTube: 20 billion USD profit in 2021 on 28 billion
| revenue
|
| Alphabet does not break out YT's profits in their
| financial reports, just the revenue. So that $20 billion
| is just a total fabrication. Shame on you.
|
| It's also not at all a credible number, because YouTube's
| split of the ad revenue is known to be 45%. It's
| literally impossible for them to have 70% margins like
| you claim.
| esperent wrote:
| > Shame on you.
|
| Weirdly antagonist response.
| dismalpedigree wrote:
| YT is becoming unusable. Watch 2 ads before it starts.
| Then another ad every 60 seconds. Oh and one at the end
| for good measure.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| You forgot the "thank our sponsors" moment that >50%
| videos then make you sit through, even if you are on YT
| premium, or using a regular ad blocker.
| timfsu wrote:
| Transcoding and storage are far bigger costs than
| download, and people are uploading videos to YT all the
| time
| xyst wrote:
| Decentralized architecture, open source. No one single
| entity owns the platform. "Payment" is in the form of
| sharing your hosted content (bandwidth, energy, time).
| Fully democratized.
| winnie_ua wrote:
| But what if you can't afford having huge server, to
| contribute to the network?
|
| And how to incentivise people in redistributing content?
|
| For example in perfect decentralized p2p world, people on
| mobile clients would be leaching content from fat
| clients. You either have to rent server, to host for your
| own phone, or go to some company to do it for you.
|
| That's complicated :-(
| shiomiru wrote:
| People are already paying companies to access the
| Internet. If the infrastructure (and the incentives)
| actually existed, I doubt the average person would have
| to worry much more about it than their phone bill.
|
| Of course copyright laws make this "perfect p2p world"
| illegal, so there was never even a chance for it to
| materialize.
| smoldesu wrote:
| With blackjack and hookers, too!
| wussboy wrote:
| > What replaces it? People aren't going to host content for
| free.
|
| Perhaps. But I for one would like to try this just to see
| what that Internet would look like. I think it would be a
| refreshing change from the Internet we currently have.
| TheRealDunkirk wrote:
| Well, we had it, back in the late 90's. You wanted to put
| a video on the internet for people to see? You put it on
| your site, and paid the appropriate fee for the space and
| the bandwidth.
|
| So people wanted to get paid for the content, if nothing
| more than to cover the hosting costs, and LEPT at the
| chance to put their crap in some walled garden that
| handled the monetization. If we had it to do all over
| again, we'd wind up right back at the same spot.
|
| The only thing that will fix this situation is to force
| YouTube to charge for subscriptions at a price point that
| gets rid of the advertising, like Netflix. And then YT
| can share THAT money with creators. And this goes for
| every other "free" service where the product is YOU, like
| Facebook and Twitter.
|
| I still can't wrap my head around how advertising is so
| valuable that the entire US economy seems to be based on
| it now. I just can't fathom there's apparently this
| strong of a correlation between annoying ad campaigns and
| consumer spending, but it MUST exist, ipso facto.
| int_19h wrote:
| Honestly? I don't care. The economy will figure it out,
| somehow, like we always did whenever some business model or
| another went obsolete. At the end of the day, no ads
| produce wealth; people do.
|
| And no, I don't want "government-approved ads", either -
| that's a surefire way to corrupt our political system even
| further.
| otabdeveloper4 wrote:
| You're gonna have to wait a very long time. Hoping for ads to
| disappear is like hoping money suddenly goes away because it
| is "the root of all evil".
| visarga wrote:
| On the medium term I see another problem for search ads - the
| raise of AI powered question answering engines. They are
| accessible through voice on mobile, but probably have much less
| opportunity for ad revenue. The research grade models are
| amazing, but deployed models like Google Assistant very far
| behind. I bet Google is dragging its feet with the deployment
| of QA technology because the shift is not in their interest.
| Site publishers won't like it either because they lose a part
| of the search traffic.
|
| In the meantime a new crop of semantic search + question
| answering engines appear (like DeepSet.ai's Haystack). It's
| time to ditch link based results. They are primitive and
| actually don't work well today.
| soco wrote:
| "Hey Siri show me the best restaurant in town!" "Sure but by
| the way did you know about this new car insurance?"
| pradn wrote:
| The voice assistants already do self--advertisement by
| suggesting other things you can do when you ask for simple
| things like the time or the weather. At best this is to
| help people understand what's possible, and at worst it's
| to juice engagement metrics.
| yellow_postit wrote:
| Siri will just lead with a paid local ad the for an
| impossible to define term as "best".
|
| Apple desperately wants to grow their ad business and has
| found a great wedge under the guise of privacy to kick push
| away competition.
| ksec wrote:
| 1. Google isn't relatively safe. They are paying rent to Apple
| just for default. And while the cost per user has been flat
| over the years, ( growth coming from total active iPhone /
| Apple user ). Apple may raise that cost, taking another slice
| form Google.
|
| 2. This has already happened. Amazon's Ads is making more
| profits than Amazon E-Comm itself.
|
| It is nice we finally have some decent discussion on Ads.
| Rather than the usual HN rant about how all ads are evil. Or
| Internet should be free of Ads.
| greatpostman wrote:
| YouTube and Facebook tune their recommendation algorithms for
| censorship and ad profit. This left a massive gap in their
| product, which was filled by tiktok. Capitalism is at work here
| macleginn wrote:
| 'Microsoft's social network, LinkedIn, is unglamorous but its
| business-to-business ads allow it to monetise the time users
| spend on it at a rate roughly four times that of Facebook,
| estimates Andrew Lipsman of eMarketer. It generates more revenue
| than some medium-sized networks including Snap's Snapchat and
| Twitter. <...> So far [Apple] is only dabbling in ads and does
| not report sales figures. But Bloomberg reported recently that
| Apple's ad business was already generating sales of $4bn a year,
| making it about as big an ad platform as Twitter.'
|
| Twitter is now a unit of being moderately unsuccessful at
| advertising.
| cloutchaser wrote:
| Considering the audience of twitter, which is the elite of
| society, this is really is an especially bad performance.
|
| Twitter advertising should be the highest CPM out there, with
| the probably wealth and influence level of its audience.
| enumjorge wrote:
| > Considering the audience of twitter, which is the elite of
| society
|
| You and I have very different experiences of Twitter
| samstave wrote:
| yeah, thats the stupidest thing ive read in a bit...
|
| when i interviewed at twitter in ~2006? i was asked what i
| thought twitter was, and I Replied that it was a "sentiment
| barometer'
|
| They didnt like that.
| thundergolfer wrote:
| I'm guessing you don't use Twitter or follow it much. Of
| all the major social platforms -- FB, Reddit, Snapchat,
| TikTok, Twitter, Instagram -- only Twitter has
| significant and consistent usage by the intellectual and
| economic elite.
| gunapologist99 wrote:
| Both can be true.
| samstave wrote:
| Just like when I interviewed at Goog and the asked me
| "what do you think google is" and I replied "everyone
| thinks you're a search engine, but you're and ad engine
| only..."
|
| They then called me to tell me " YOU DID GREAT ON YOUR
| interview, you'll get an offer letter tmrw"
|
| The next day they called me back to tell me "yeah, we
| arent going to give you that job"
|
| They then proceeded to call me for FOUR FUCKING YEARS for
| the same job.... and I finally had to tell them " DELETE
| MY FUCKING NUMBER BITCH!"
| Loughla wrote:
| >Considering the audience of twitter, which is the elite of
| society,
|
| What? Twitter is firehose news for, in my experience, the
| lowest common denominator unless you spend an inordinate
| amount of time curating your own experience.
| samstave wrote:
| plug the hose into the septic tank. thats how one properly
| curates twitter
| samstave wrote:
| who the fuck is spending even a microsecond amount of time on
| linkedin to even see one ad, let alone a lot...
|
| the amazing thing about social media ads, is that they make me
| less engaged than more... i wouldnt touch a facebook url with a
| ten foot pole... I will never update my linkedin again....
| blech
| anthonypasq wrote:
| Do we really need this type of comment every single time
| advertising is mentioned. We get it, ads don't work on you.
| The entire world is just throwing away trillions of dollars
| in marketing for nothing.
|
| How is it so inconceivable to you that people use LinkedIn?
| samstave wrote:
| Get lost buddy - if you'd been in tech as long as I have...
| you'd know why we need this comment "every single time"
| SimonV123 wrote:
| throwmeback wrote:
| Oh no. Poor Google-Meta advertising duopoly!
| baxtr wrote:
| The article is based on... nothing? And a bit of TikTok mania? I
| thought this was really low quality in essence - providing no
| real proof for any substantial change.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Did you miss the graph in the article?
|
| Key quote:
|
| > _For Meta and Google's corporate parent, Alphabet, the
| cyclical problem may not be the worst of it. They might once
| have hoped to offset the digital-ad pie's slower growth by
| grabbing a larger slice of it. No longer. Although the two are
| together expected to rake in around $300bn in revenues this
| year, sales of their four biggest rivals in the West will
| amount to almost a quarter as much. If that does not sound like
| a lot, it is nevertheless giving the incumbents reason to
| worry. Five years ago most of those rivals were scarcely in the
| ad business at all (see chart)._
| baxtr wrote:
| So that's saying:
|
| - today: Google and FB have 75% of all sales combined and
| those other rivals have 25%
|
| - 5 years ago: those other rivals had 0%
|
| What does this say about the market share of FB and google 5
| years ago? Nothing. That's exactly what I'm talking about.
| Maybe it was 90%. Maybe it was 75%! But hey, whatever, let's
| publish that clickbait article.
| crazygringo wrote:
| It's an article about potential competitive threats to
| Google-Meta, not a survey of the entire online advertising
| industry. The rise of potential competitors is not
| "nothing".
|
| "Clickbait" can be used with a lot of publications. But in
| the list of publications it can be applied to... I'd say
| the Economist would be ranked about dead last. Maybe tied
| with Der Spiegel.
| baxtr wrote:
| The title is: "the ad duopoly is under attack". The term
| duopoly describes how the market is split: two companies
| make up the biggest chunk. The article provides no
| evidence that the market structure has changed. See my
| comment.
|
| A clickbait can be used by any publication. Apparently,
| including The Economist.
| pessimizer wrote:
| If I'm understanding baxtr's point, they're saying that
| the article is attempting to claim a trend without
| showing enough evidence to point to one. The fact that
| the competitors have gone from 0% to 25% within 5 years
| could be evidence that Google/Meta have growing threats,
| or it could be evidence that their competitors can't grab
| enough of the market to be sustainable so they die within
| 5 years, or that they're buying up all of the competition
| within 5 years of their launch. Google/Meta could have
| gone from 60% of the market to 75% of the market in the
| last five years.
|
| So that's the case for the headline claim that they're _"
| under attack"_ being linkbait. It isn't really affected
| by how you feel about the Economist's (or even less Der
| Spiegel's) brand.
| baxtr wrote:
| Exactly. Thanks for explaining it better than I did.
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| Tiktok ads have significant better results than Google
| Facebook. Not even close.
| pessimizer wrote:
| My assumption is that Google and Facebook are pushing stories
| about how they're in a precarious position and actually have a
| lot of threatening competition, some of it dangerous, foreign,
| and in need of investigation.
| tenpies wrote:
| Absolutely, although the risk for them is retaliation,
| especially with the US deciding that it wants to be the chief
| geopolitical chaos generator in the world.
|
| Having US social media in your country is a huge geopolitical
| risk, especially if you're one of the regimes that isn't just
| doing what the US wants at all times.
| throwawayKiwi9 wrote:
| I think we are seeing psychogical warfare occurring on any
| platform possible by many groups & governments. If we keep
| using technologies that refuse to adapt to strictly prevent
| this, rather than enable it, we are doomed. Metrics will
| always be gamed, and cat-and-mouse moderation makes this a
| losing game.
| asdff wrote:
| How would you even do that? Government controls mass
| communication by law, its privately operated with federal
| permission essentially (FCC). Government sets up the
| frameworks that media operates in. the best you an do is
| akin to zine printing with your little independent
| website. Once you go big you are subject to attack by the
| media if you go against elite business interests and
| vilification by the wider public who will never be
| exposed to nuance, then its over. The public narrative
| moves on to the next permitted discussion point and
| leaves you behind. I hate to be a cynic but this is what
| the history books suggest.
| throwawayKiwi9 wrote:
| I think platforms and users need to be willing to
| sacrifice functions that can be abused. at least by
| default. Email and phone are both examples where
| enforcing allow-list communication at the protocol level
| could save them. Instead, both of these communication
| protocols are dying because they are now overflowing with
| scams and spams that are allowed to reach you instantly
| by default, with little to no distinction from legitimate
| communication. Something like Twitter probably should not
| exist in its current form.
| winnie_ua wrote:
| You looks like Russian :D
|
| But you are blaming US in all problems. Typical.
| [deleted]
| osigurdson wrote:
| I've never really understood how such a large portion of google's
| revenues are derived from search. I've rarely clicked on any ads
| when using google or any other search engine.
|
| YouTube, in my opinion, is far more effective as users are forced
| to watch 5 second ads prior to watching the video that they are
| interested in. 5 seconds is too short to context switch and can
| also convey a lot of information.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| I think most people click the ad more than you. A lot of
| companies advertise on their own keyword so I'll click the ad
| then for example if I want to charge the company.
| kumarvvr wrote:
| The important part is "rarely clicked". Meaning, you have
| sometimes clicked on it.
|
| Spread that click amongst billions of users, and you have a
| good revenue stream.
| osigurdson wrote:
| To quantify it a bit more, I think I only click on google
| search ads on the order of once per year. Contrast that with
| YouTube, where I probably watch 1000 ads per year on that
| platform.
| yakaccount4 wrote:
| Neither have I clicked on any Google ads. I suppose the sheer
| volume of searches made on Google make up for a 0.000001% click
| rate (made up number, but point stands).
| seibelj wrote:
| One reason I'm highly skeptical to claims of monopolies,
| especially in an industry as dynamic and volatile as tech, is in
| 5 years you already have competition from new upstarts (TikTok)
| and old hands (Apple and Amazon) that makes claims of digital
| advertising "dominance" by Google and Meta outdated. The monopoly
| claims were suspicious from the beginning but now it looks pretty
| absurd.
| cush wrote:
| They can and have swayed elections at the turn of a dial...
| rabuse wrote:
| TikTok was only able to compete so quickly because it's
| literally sponsored and funded by the CCP.
| largepeepee wrote:
| That's like saying every SV tech company is funded by the
| CIA.
|
| Oh wait..
| pessimizer wrote:
| As if the others aren't government supported and coddled
| monopolies.
| lossolo wrote:
| TikTok is better product than Youtube shorts or Instagram
| reels, money have nothing to do with it, especially while
| FAANG have more money than ByteDance.
| winnie_ua wrote:
| You forget, that YT shorts appeared after TT emergence. It
| was a try from Google to get some part of TT success.
|
| To be honest, I didn't use TT. Ecept when someone gives me
| direct link. But I am using YTshorts, coz I am already at
| youtube watching long vids.
|
| Pretty addictive this shorts are.
|
| I hate TT for trying to force me into registering.
|
| Also I hate TT for baning porn and even erotic couple tears
| ago.
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| The claims of monopoly have always been political. The only
| company that comes close to a monopoly is Apple due to them
| locking out third-party apps on their phones.
| trhway wrote:
| "Monopoly" is just a shorthand for a range of market
| dominance abuse. I.e. if an 800lb gorilla abuses you, it
| doesn't really matter that there are several others 600-700
| lb gorillas ready to do the same to you.
|
| https://ethique.rexel.com/en/competition-law/abuse-of-a-
| domi...
|
| "A dominant position is not defined merely by market share,
| but by classification as a market leader. Typically, a
| company is considered to hold a dominant position if it has a
| market share of more than 40%, but even a market share of 15%
| may be considered dominant if it is the largest player in a
| fragmented market. "
| blululu wrote:
| Monopoly literally means a single seller. Duopolies and
| oligopolies are distinct both in theory and practice.
| nvrspyx wrote:
| I think they're saying that the word "monopoly" is used
| colloquially, by many, to simply mean dominant position
| and that those people don't mean the literal definition.
| It seems they're just trying to say that the parent
| comment is arguing about the definition of monopoly
| rather than the actual point, which is dominant position
| abuse.
|
| I agree that it's important to recognize the differences
| between monopolies, duopolies, and oligopolies in theory
| and practice, as you say, but I also don't think that
| using the wrong term nullifies validity of the actual
| point.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Fine, bring back "trust" if you prefer an archaic
| precision. Antitrust is about trusts, not monopolies.
| InCityDreams wrote:
| Did you[r quote] somehow confuse 'monopoly' with
| 'dominant'?
| zo1 wrote:
| Unfortunately, in the meantime, the "monopoly" has done huge
| and world-or-population scale damage in some way. Just think of
| how the industry has been affected (potentially negatively) by
| the heavy push and funding by big tech giants of technologies
| such as React, Angular, and Kubernetes?
| [deleted]
| warinukraine wrote:
| r00fus wrote:
| Is it that this is a contraction of the online advertising
| market, or just the fact that cheap money is gone (corporate
| paper is no longer free if you want it)?
| 13324 wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20220918181734/https://www.econo...
| hardware2win wrote:
| Are MSFT and Apple safest faangs rn?
| tootie wrote:
| Did you look at the graphic? Google and Meta no longer have a
| stranglehold on the market, but the market is also bigger than
| ever. 70% of the ad market in 2022 is worth more than 90% was
| in 2012.
| screye wrote:
| Facebook and social media companies rely on viral phenomena to
| sustain their monopoly. It will take 1 inciting event for them
| to fall into an irreversible death spiral. The instagram +
| whatsapp acquisition, feeling threatened by 100x smaller dev
| shops demonstrates that.
|
| Google's big advantage is that their core product has
| fundamental value (search and by proxy: ads) and their
| secondary products are such loss-leaders that outcompeting
| those freebies (Google office suite, Gmail, maps, YT, chrome,
| ml tooling) is where the real difficulty comes in. But building
| a core-search competitor is far easier than competition with
| Apple or Msft's core products. Google has a lot more
| scaffolding that FB, but they too have a single point of
| failure. A sea-change (like Mapreduce, pagerank, the
| smartphone) can see them collapse swiftly.
|
| On the other hand, enterprise / feature-checklist companies lie
| in a stable equilibrium. You can't really beat them unless you
| invest a similar amount of resources into it. And even if you
| defeat them, they'll catch up to you in time if they're run at
| similar levels of competency and can throw a ton money money at
| it. Microsoft and Apple are exactly that. It's like trying to
| start a Boeing or Nvidia competitor. You better at least be at
| Airbus's or AMD's level before even trying to compete against
| boeing.
|
| Microsoft's weakness is best displayed by Adpbe's acquisition
| of Figma. If Microsoft is run in a similarly predatory manner
| and a competitor gets 10 free years to catch up on 1 feature
| while you continuously fail to innovate, then you feel a mild
| threat, at which point you can simply outbid and acquire them.
| That shows how remarkably comfortable of a position Adobe is
| in, and Microsft and Apple sit a couple of orders of magnitude
| above that.
| VirusNewbie wrote:
| I'm fairly certain gmail, youtube, and gsuite on their own
| would be unicorns still.
| scarface74 wrote:
| YouTube is barely break even according to most reports and
| GSuite is really not that big in the enterprise.
|
| https://www.computerworld.com/article/3637079/as-google-
| move...
|
| > Google grew its share of the productivity software market
| to 10.3% in 2020, according to research from Gartner,
| taking about 2% from Microsoft. Microsoft is still the
| clear leader however, with 89.2%. Overall, the productivity
| software suite market grew 18.2% during 2020.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Microsoft built a 3 trillion dollar company in the back
| of their productivity suite. Reaching 10% market share
| there is easily worth 10 billion.
|
| YouTube is making 10s of billions a year profit. Its
| margins on absolutely bonkers.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Microsoft's latest quarterly report
|
| https://www.microsoft.com/en-
| us/Investor/earnings/FY-2022-Q2...
|
| "Productivity & Business Processes" - $7.698 Billion in
| revenue.
|
| That segment includes Office 365 and LinkedIn and
| Dynamics
|
| As far as YouTube having huge margins
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/26/youtubes-huge-miss-shows-
| dig...
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Azure and Microsoft's hardware business would be nothing
| without the productivity suite. They leverage their
| existing business and personal relationships to sell
| those products.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Yes and Google hired an _Oracle_ executive to handle
| enterprise relationships and GCP. What could possibly go
| wrong?
|
| Google isn't exactly known for great customer support or
| anything else that requires high touch.
| IceWreck wrote:
| Youtube wouldve never grown to that size without Googe's
| money. It wouldve inevitably shut down or made huge changes
| to their model.
|
| Gmail, yes it would be huge without google but its only so
| bug because google forced it down everyone's throats with
| mandatory google accounts for android, maps, youtube,
| drive, etc.
|
| GSuite again this would never be s big without google's
| backing. Just look at its non MS competitors.
| scarface74 wrote:
| What happens if Apple decides to or is forced to stop
| accepting a reported $18 billion a year to be the default
| search engine on iOS devices? Google will lose its most
| valuable customers.
|
| Microsoft Office adoption in the enterprise dwarfs GSuite.
| winnie_ua wrote:
| I bet it won't happen, and if happen it won't affect G a
| lot, at this point.
|
| 1. Who else can Apple put as default search engine? --
| Bing? But Microsoft is Apples direct competitor on laptop
| and desktop market. Who knows what Bing would show users?
| And other competitors in search market are extinct. Yahoo,
| AOL, etc. Duck is using BING's api.
|
| There are local market search engines (like Yandex in
| russia), but they already are default search engines on
| mobile in that markets(at least on lot of android devices,
| don't know about iOS).
|
| At most Apple would offer user to chose search engine on
| first set-up, and guess what users would chose?
|
| So we slowly are moving to second point.
|
| I don't thing Google needs to pay for this, they just are
| doing this by inertia. Most competitors are extinct. And
| people know by word of mouth, that google "is the best
| search engine".
|
| About Firefox it might be tricky. People who decided to try
| firefox can be more interested in trying another search
| engine as well, so here their payment for default SE makes
| some sense.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Google is also a competitor in mobile which is a much
| bigger deal. Apple and Microsoft have been competitors
| and at the same time worked together since Microsoft
| wrote AppleSoft Basic in 1980. Microsoft was on stage
| with Jobs at the introduction of the Mac in 1984 and has
| consistently developed Office for the Mac since 1986
| through all of the Macs transitions.
|
| If Google didn't need to pay, why are they paying $18
| Billion a year?
|
| I added the part "are forced to" because as much as I
| rail against the government getting involved in the free
| market when it comes to tech, it even makes me feel
| uneasy that the two major mobile platforms are
| unabashedly colluding and one is outright paying the
| other to funnel customers.
| winnie_ua wrote:
| I don't think Android is a competitor to iOS. Most iOS
| users fanatically don't want other mobile OS. Don't think
| Ads can change this :D
|
| Not sure about PC, but I bet availability of more apps
| and games can tip the scales. I consider MS more
| competition than Android. But that's just my perspective.
|
| > it even makes me feel uneasy that the two major mobile
| platforms are unabashedly colluding and one is outright
| paying the other to funnel customers.
|
| Indeed sounds creepy.
|
| P.S. As other commenters mentioned -- there is Brave
| search, about which I was not aware, that it has their
| own Crawler. Apple could potentially switch to it(or buy
| it).
| scarface74 wrote:
| I doubt users of ARM based Macs are saying "I really want
| a laptop with a quarter of the battery life, gets hot
| enough to melt steel when I open three Chrome windows and
| sounds like a 747 and on top of that is slower".
|
| These days as long as consumers have Office, Adobe's
| software and a good web browser, they don't care.
|
| Apple does have its own crawler - AppleBot. It uses its
| own "search engine" in parts of the interface.
| NayamAmarshe wrote:
| I believe Brave Search is going to be disruptive in the
| future. It's so good that I haven't had the need to open
| Google in a year!
| winnie_ua wrote:
| Indeed seems, that Brave have their own crawler.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/BATProject/comments/o68v4c/comme
| nt/...
|
| Perhaps Apple can switch to it, then :D
| asdff wrote:
| If google stopped paying apple, then apple would probably
| make their own search engine honestly. They already have
| a tentacle wrapped around all sorts of industries you
| wouldn't have expected 15 years ago.
| winnie_ua wrote:
| It's not so easy to create search engine from scratch.
| (not using other SE's API).
|
| Needs lots of servers and expertise how to write this
| spiders.
| screye wrote:
| Oh yeah, that's exactly my point.
|
| IMO, The vulnerability from most vulnerable to least goes:
|
| Facebook > Google >> Apple ~> Microsoft = Amazon
| winnie_ua wrote:
| Interesting observation. Need to reflect on this.
|
| What else busdines does Meta have beyond FB, Instagram,
| Whatsapp?
|
| I guess they are somehow wurnelable to search market
| problems(including regulations), but that won't make them
| collapse, just less wealthy. And they can start
| monetizing WA and Insta more agresively.
|
| Perhaps your concerns are one of reasons why they are
| investing so much in metaverse.
|
| Google on other hand has bigger hold. They have Hosting
| business(which is not profitable currently, if that is
| truth), and YouTube. If something happens with search
| business, YouTube would feed Alphabet. Also money from
| play store and licensing fees from android vendors. I
| bet, Google's investment in Android was great move. It
| makes them more secure than Facebook.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Android makes very little money for Google. It came out
| in the Oracle lawsuit that Google had only made $27
| billion in profit from Android from its inception through
| the trial.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/article/us-oracle-google-lawsuit-
| idU...
|
| Android was already dominant as far as market share. Also
| Google is non existent in the worlds largest mobile
| market - China. That's Apple's biggest market.
|
| Apple has to be making more from Google on mobile from
| the money that Google pays Apple to be the default search
| engine (a reported $18 billion) a year than Google makes
| from Android.
| winnie_ua wrote:
| About Apple. I guess most insecurity is from possibility
| of war in Taiwan. Inability to produce iPhones would
| struck hard. But beyond that, they have most loyal
| customers, who doesn't care abou their freedom to own
| device.
| scarface74 wrote:
| If war comes in Taiwan, everyone is screwed. Google
| depends on servers and components made in Taiwan. Amazon
| and Microsoft also depend on servers.
| winnie_ua wrote:
| Sadly, but yes.
|
| Just thinking, who would be screwed more... hm.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| Microsoft is reliant on Azure for growth. Although cloud
| initiatives are designed to save money in the long run, in the
| short run they cost money. If we go into a strong recession
| than at the least I would expect Azure to do worse than
| projected.
|
| Likewise, Apple sells luxury goods.
|
| If I had to bet on one FAAMNG in a sharp recession it would be
| Amazon. They have the most diversified revenue streams.
| scarface74 wrote:
| This could only come from someone who doesn't understand the
| enterprise.
|
| How is a luxury good affordable by over 50% of the US market?
| bradleyjg wrote:
| What percentage of the US market has a piece of jewelry? If
| that's above 50% is jewelry a staple good instead of a
| luxury good?
| scarface74 wrote:
| Why would jewelry necessarily be a "luxury" of many
| people can buy it?
| bee_rider wrote:
| FAANG is kind of a weird classification: 4 web companies, 2 of
| which are primarily ad companies... and then Apple, a devices
| company with real low-level chops.
|
| Why don't we put Apple in with somebody like: MAIA --
| Microsoft, Apple, Intel, AMD. Maybe add NVIDIA, you have to
| work out a good acronym though.
| [deleted]
| classified wrote:
| > a good acronym
|
| MANIA
| bee_rider wrote:
| Ah wow, that's better than the Lord of the Rings reference.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Intel and AMD are no longer dominant.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Well, it depends on how you want to define "dominant" (in
| which markets, by what metrics) and to be honest the
| ambiguous opener has not reeled me in.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Intel market cap is 120B. Apple, Microsoft, Google and
| Amazon are all worth more than a trillion.
|
| TSMCs market cap is 4x Intel's and produces far more
| processors and has a more advanced manufacturing process.
| Q6T46nT668w6i3m wrote:
| Yes, but I don't think there's been a moment where they were
| not the safest.
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| Well except for when Apple lost most of their market share
| and almost went bankrupt.
| deepstack wrote:
| Yup there were even Mac clones then, MS actually came in
| saved Apple at one point.
| samwillis wrote:
| That was very much pre FAANG as a construct. Apple, since
| it's second coming, has never be in an unsafe position.
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| Apple is focused on consumer products and consumers can
| be fickle. While it won't be anytime soon, it's not
| impossible for Apple to someday lose the design mojo that
| makes their products popular. Steve Jobs and his RDF
| aren't there anymore and neither is Jony Ive.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Creating hardware at scale is hard. What company do you
| think will be able to duplicate Apple's infrastructure,
| manufacturing, chip design, retail, etc?
|
| Not to mention that even with "great design" any Android
| phone is still stuck with being Android and the lack of
| integration between software, hardware and ecosystem.
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| Foxconn is the most prominent contract manufacturer that
| Apple uses, Samsung makes iPhone screens, etc.; their
| infrastructure and manufacturing pipeline is the same as
| everyone else's. And suggesting that Apple's leadership
| in processor design can't be toppled is akin to saying
| that Intel's leadership in chip design can't be toppled
| back in the several decades when they were dominant.
|
| It's the design and ecosystem that keeps consumers buying
| Apple product but what used to be seen as cool and hip
| can turn old-fashioned after a while; Sony's Walkman
| products used to be everywhere but where are they now?
| scarface74 wrote:
| You're not going to get the same prices or priorities
| from Foxconn or TSMC with a less than 10 million device
| run rate that Apple gets by selling 300 million +
| devices. Besides Apple invest billions in TSMC and
| Foxconn and their other suppliers.
|
| Do you remember that Apple became dominant in the iPod
| era by buying up all of the worlds supply of 2.5 inch
| hard drives and later flash chips?
|
| Anyone else is going to struggle to get the prices or
| manufacturing time from suppliers to produce at scale.
|
| Heck Sony is struggling to make even 21 million PS5 in a
| year. If Sony can't manufacture at scale, which
| electronic manufacturer can?
|
| It's not just priced for design, it's processor design,
| supply chain management, software, software/hardware
| integration etc.
| bergenty wrote:
| Goog and Facebook are still safe as hell. Even if you think
| Facebook is waning, is going tk be hard to dislodge WhatsApp
| and instagram and I don't really think Facebook is going away.
| int_19h wrote:
| It's not just the market; there are also potential
| legislative threats. Facebook would surely be the first on
| any such chopping block.
| doktorhladnjak wrote:
| Those companies aren't going away any time soon. Heck, IBM,
| Cisco, Hewlett Packard are all still around, and all still
| making profits. Doesn't mean they're desirable places to work
| at all compared to the olden days.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Apple, Amazon and Microsoft. They have real hard to reproduce
| infrastructure.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| It's an interesting issue because it is probably Apple's fault.
|
| https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/08/small-businesses-cou...
|
| Apple accidentally attacked small businesses that used to rely on
| geographically relevant advertising by increasing privacy
| protection.
|
| There is no easy solution here.
| wussboy wrote:
| All that geographically relevant advertising could go back to
| how it was before Facebook/Google became the only way to do it.
| It seem an easy-enough solution to me.
| samwillis wrote:
| To some extent I disagree with this, not that Google+Meta are
| under attack, but that the threat is coming from competitors.
|
| I've spent most of the last 10 years earning my living from an
| e-commerce business I own. The online advertising industry is
| unrecognisable from when we started. My thesis, in beef, is that
| the industries excessive uses of personalised data and tracking
| lead to increased regulation, and then a massive pivot to even
| more "AI" as a means to circumvent that (to some extent). The AI
| in the ad industry now, I believe, is detrimental to the
| advertiser. It's now just one big black box, you put money in one
| side and get traffic out the other. The control and useful
| tracking (what _actual_ search terms people are using, proper
| _visible_ conversion tracking of an ad) is now almost non-
| existent. As an advertiser your livelihood is dependant on an
| algorithm, not skill, not intuition, not experience, not even
| track record.
|
| Facebook, Google and the rest of the industry were so driven by
| profit at all cost, and at the expense of long term thinking,
| they shot themselves in the foot.
|
| Advertisers are searching for alternatives, but they are all the
| same.
|
| I think online advertising, as a whole, is probably f***ed...
| civilized wrote:
| > My thesis, in beef
|
| This is a delightful turn of phrase. I wonder if it was
| deliberate or an autocorrect happy accident.
| verisimi wrote:
| In brief, I think
| samwillis wrote:
| Correct.
| tjpnz wrote:
| Do they carry a vegetarian option?
| samwillis wrote:
| I really hate iPhone autocorrect...
| hestefisk wrote:
| It's a very beefy thesis ... Or a beef with someone?
| civilized wrote:
| The latter. Since he's complaining about the ad industry
| from what sounds like a personal perspective.
| xwdv wrote:
| Is it really much different from offline advertising in days of
| old? That was more or less also a black box.
| jeremyjh wrote:
| Yes, you would know what content your ad was displayed
| between and could draw inferences and do research on that
| specific audience.
| jzb wrote:
| So, ironically, advertisers are right back where they started.
| The relentless desire to track leads gutted publishing because
| the ad dollars got sucked up by Google and Facebook. Publishers
| that survived did so by chasing "clickbait" and SEO that
| everybody bitches about. In the end the golems they helped
| create is taking away the control and tracking they wanted in
| the first place - and undermining their relationships with
| their audience, too.
|
| Maybe we'll move back to a better model that helps support
| decent content.
| ehnto wrote:
| Big businesses and advertising agencies already see this,
| they have been tracking it. But I wouldn't want to be a small
| ecommerce brand who built their business on the back of
| online marketing that worked. Coupled with Amazon stealing
| absolutely everyone's lunch, they have had the rug pulled out
| from under them by big tech companies.
|
| You can say it's their fault for building on top of someone
| elses land, and you would be mostly right. But online
| commerce has become a mess, and it is just hard to make it
| work without being on these platforms. They have hoovered up
| all the customers, and dominate all the avenues for
| advertising online.
| ako wrote:
| > "As an ... your livelihood is dependant on an algorithm, not
| skill, not intuition, not experience, not even track record."
|
| Does this say anything about AI in general?
| samwillis wrote:
| Interesting point! And I supposed with things like stable
| diffusion there is a level of skill, intuition and experience
| in how to steer it to what you want. A skilled stable
| diffusion user is still an "artist".
|
| My issue with the AI behind ad networks is that it a hostile
| AI, it is trained with an agenda that does not align to that
| of the user (the advertiser). The AI is trained to maximise
| the profits for the platform (Google or Facebook) at the
| expense of the advertisers own business and the viewers of
| the ads. It's an exploitative relationship (to both
| advertisers and viewers), compleat with all the usual gas
| lighting and manipulation.
|
| In my view there needs to be a separation of ad placement
| vendor and advertising exchange. The exchanges need to be
| regulated in the same was a securities exchange is.
| bogomipz wrote:
| >"I've spent most of the last 10 years earning my living from
| an e-commerce business I own. The online advertising industry
| is unrecognisable from when we started."
|
| Could you elaborate on some of the things that have changed to
| make it unrecognizable? Wasn't it still targeted ads 10 years
| ago by the same players mentioned in the article i.e FB and
| Google?
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| This Google black box is not just on the advertising side, it's
| also on the customer service side. Really impossible to get
| hold of a real person, even after giving them thousands of
| dollars.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| "Facebook, Google and the rest of the industry were so driven
| by profit at all cost, and at the expense of long term
| thinking, they shot themselves in the foot."
|
| If one subscribes to the idea that reducing spending can help
| curb inflation, then consider that the "business model" of
| online advertising-supported "tech" companies seem to require
| that consumers keep spending, in spite of inflation.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| To make money by helping people spend less, you need to be a
| "discounter" or some kind. E.g. here is fruit that is 20%
| less than your supermarket. But even such services and
| businesses need to advertise. Even the government needs to
| pay to advertise, even if it is advertising giving money to
| help people in tough economic times.
|
| I think companies that are so large, and do one thing
| (advertise!) cannot be immune from business cycles. But is it
| a bad thing if these companies don't grow every single damn
| year.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Have you read "The Age of Surveillance Capitalism"? I would say
| that your observations - tho they frustrate you - are very much
| inline with what the book proposes.
|
| In short, and paraphrased a bit to speak to your context,
| you're no longer buying impressions / clicks in the traditional
| transactional sense. Instead you're buying the influence on
| behavior within the broader context of what these networks know
| about the individuals within a market, but also what other
| influence these networks have accrued on the individuals.
|
| It's a blackbox be because it's no longer a simple transaction,
| but also because the AI (?) is in a broader sense exerting
| proactive influences. Nudges on behavior that add up and
| ideally can not only be predicted but also created.
|
| The book is long and deep, but it will also change how you view
| the world and Big Tech.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_of_Surveillance_Capi...
| jeremyjh wrote:
| But how does an ad buyer know their ads are even displayed to
| a relevant audience?
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| You don't, but that's what's being sold. Not the old
| transaction, but instead the boarder awareness from the
| network of the market to create and deliver an audience.
|
| Put another way, the book would argue that with the
| traditional way "relevance" was a reactive guess. Going
| forward the ability to create the desired behaviour is less
| of a guess and more predictable.
| robryan wrote:
| I have spent a long time in ecommerce and follow the results of
| a bunch of public ecommerce companies.
|
| It seems to be that Google basically collects the whole profit
| margin. Companies will do this to keep growth as high as
| possible to justify their high market caps and hope that they
| can eventually scale back on advertising and keep their
| customer base.
| samwillis wrote:
| 100% this! You are even required now (as an advertiser) to
| send so many metrics to Google for the algorithms to work
| they know _everything_ about your business. The entire system
| is now engineered to extract the maximum possible value from
| the advertiser.
|
| People complain about the tracking of visitors, but the
| tracking of advertisers own business is equally as abusive.
| martincmartin wrote:
| > _As an advertiser your livelihood is dependant on an
| algorithm, not skill, not intuition, not experience, not even
| track record._
|
| In other words, companies now have to compete by making useful
| products at a good price, rather than gaming SEO.
| deltree7 wrote:
| Naive understanding of the world / information.
|
| Say, In a world of 1,000,000,000+ great products, reaching
| consumers through word-of-mouth is hard.
|
| I bet there are products that solves a lot of your current
| problems at a decent price. But you don't know about it and
| none of your friends or network have the same problem for you
| to give you the solution.
|
| The only way to solve this problem is for the product/service
| provider to know about you and the fact that you have a
| problem.
|
| Advertising is actually an optimal / scalable way for
| companies to reach you.
|
| In a Billion+ product world, you need at least 10 Million
| Trust worthy reviewers to give you an unbiased review of
| everything. But, how do you trust the reviewers?
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| >>"The only way to solve this problem is for the
| product/service provider to know about you and the fact
| that you have a problem."
|
| Only way?? No.
|
| No no absolutely not.
|
| If/Since we are talking ideas and hypothetical, the
| _preferred_ way would be for me to search for a product /
| indicate my need, and then marketplace to provide / compete
| for it.
|
| The whole notion that advertiser must understand what I
| need, all the time, without my involvement knowledge or
| permission, then shove what it thinks I need up my throat
| constantly, is dystopian.
|
| Basically, I think we are mixing up a pull paradigm to
| satisfy the consumer, with a push paradigm to satisfy the
| business. This is not to be naive about realities of world,
| business, saturated market, crappy products and
| differentiation, etc. But it peeves me when companies lack
| self awareness to be honest with themselves about which
| model is beneficial to which party.
|
| Edit (and if we are going to talk about consumers being
| ignorant of the realities, let us not please _pretend_ that
| the ultimate purpose of advertising is to perfectly satisfy
| a need with optimal product. Ultimate purpose of
| advertising is to make a sale. Sometimes, that sale is in
| fact optimal for the consumer. We can disagree how often
| that occurs as a percentage.)
|
| Edit edit : the more I think the more I disagree. It's the
| word "optimal" that really bugs me - there's nothing
| optimal about modern online advertising. Clever,
| persistent, pervasive, desperate, obnoxious, hard work,
| devious, are some attributes that come to my mind. But it
| feels far from optimal - there's so much money and effort
| in this arms race which is increasingly hostile between an
| advertiser and consumer, and knowingly so; google and meta
| are 300 billion worth of not optimal :->
| galaxyLogic wrote:
| > the preferred way would be for me to search for a
| product / indicate my need
|
| Yes and then AI to find the best matches for me.
|
| But there are also things that would benefit me that I
| don't even know exist, so I can not ask for them.
| twic wrote:
| > But there are also things that would benefit me that I
| don't even know exist, so I can not ask for them.
|
| True, but those are categories of products, not products.
| That's not something companies are interested in
| advertising to you, so you can't rely on advertising to
| learn about them.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| Isn't this what catalogs used to be about?
|
| I sometimes browse random awesome-[thing] lists just to
| see what they have in store and if anything in there
| gives me any new idea or seems to scratch some itch I
| didn't even know I had.
|
| No need for any invasive tracking or obnoxious pop-ups.
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| There was a recent Ask HN from someone who was concerned
| that maybe greed was the only reason people would work
| for places like Facebook or Google any more.
|
| That thread was quickly killed before it could grow any
| legs, but I did have a knee-jerk response anyway:
|
| I'm sure there are some other reasons for those employees
| having potential to do more noble work, but aspiring to
| become an "ad man" on an aggressive media platform has
| always had an appeal to a certain amount of selfishness
| at the expense of others.
|
| Now when the entire process is geared to appeal more
| strongly to even more greedy individuals, that's what
| you're going to end up with more so than anyone else.
|
| I'm certainly not the innocuous one, with the toxic
| petrochemicals and all, where the oil business has always
| appealed more strongly to the greedy get-rich-quick types
| in its own way.
|
| Rather than add to the size of a growing behemoth, I
| chose to do my survival activities more as a parasite
| instead.
|
| There's definitely less money for the taking when you
| have to earn every dollar by adding value to resources,
| as opposed to collecting pay from accounts where funds
| were accumulated wildly before you showed up.
|
| But that's the kind of decision you've got to make.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Organizations that are trying to do something
| disreputable or shameful (or just something that could be
| construed that way by a nontrivial portion of the
| population) often come up with sweet little lies about
| their motives that help their employees sleep better at
| night.
|
| It's not about making money by serving ads, it's about _"
| organizing the world's data"_. It's not about winning
| defense contracts to put military hardware into space,
| it's about _" colonizing mars to save humanity"._ It's
| not about printing money by getting poor people to sign
| up for 50,000% APR payday loans, it's about _" providing
| liquidity to undeserved communities"_. Etc.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Hypothetically working on the security aspect doesn't
| seem so unethical. I mean, it is helping the evil empires
| in a sort of abstract way, but realistically people are
| going to use the services because they are ad-funded (and
| so, appear free). The direct harm to people who have
| their communications which they believe to be basically
| private (in the sense that they are only spied on by the
| service provider) broken into seems to be more
| significant.
| bzmrgonz wrote:
| Agree with you wholeheartedly, just look at the advances
| in AI defined graphics, why can't the search engine be
| the same, we give the search engine a query and click on
| whether we want paid product ads to be included in the
| search. The web is getting so convoluted, that we(the
| consumer) will have to install pihole into our own
| version of "assistant software" in possibly our own
| design of an android and funnel every web interaction
| thru that android/assistant. They are making it to the
| point that we will not trust their "asistant software",
| nor their ad platform, and anything else they build.
| Essentially we will filter and curate all web interaction
| that is not text. And even text may need to be curated to
| avoid echo-chamber.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Even though this idea of visibility is often touted, the
| vast majority of advertising is in practice all about
| obfuscating the actual uses (and especially limitations) of
| a product.
|
| Furthermore, rather than trying to find the few people whom
| a product matches, it is often about pushing the product on
| people who never needed it in the first place - such as the
| diamond industry marketing inventing the practice of giving
| diamond rings for engagements, or the toy industry creating
| ads to specifically teach children to nag their parents. Or
| the vast amounta of pills promising penis enlargement.
|
| Sure, these things may not happen so much in B2B specialty
| advertising, but in B2C they are the norm, and exceptions
| are few and far between.
| datavirtue wrote:
| Obfuscate facts. Appeal to emotions. To appeal to
| emotions with the kind of results they are expecting you
| have to target women and children...ideally by driving an
| invisible wedge between them and their supporting
| caregivers.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| > To appeal to emotions with the kind of results they are
| expecting you have to target women and children...ideally
| by driving an invisible wedge between them and their
| supporting caregivers.
|
| Are you comparing women to children in their ability to
| discern advertising drivel from real facts about a
| product? Not only is that insulting, it is obviously
| false.
| deltree7 wrote:
| You can reform the Ad industry in several ways (enhancing
| "truth in advertisment")
|
| i) You can only use factual information.
|
| ii) You can't use visual props unrelated to the product
| (sexy women, beaches, fancy cars, spas)
|
| But to burn advertisements due to shortcomings is like
| hating/shutting down internet because of 4chan or QAnon
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Ads => Consumerism => Destruction of the biosphere and
| depletion of natural resources => Hundreds of millions of
| extra deaths over the next few hundred years.
|
| Now, this is simplified, they don't get to bear all the
| blame, and there are worse industries, but we better
| reform them _fast_ , and radically.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| If 4chan and QAnon were the vast majority of the
| internet, I would agree with the comparison.
|
| But as I said, the vast vast majority of advertising by
| any measure you chose to use is of the manipulative kind,
| not informative. And this despite the existence of truth-
| in-advertising laws for decades.
|
| And banning advertising is not even that harmful to
| industry - we have the case study of the tabacco
| industry, which didn't exactly die away once advertising
| of all of its products was entirely prohibited in all
| wealthy countries.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Limiting advertising created bigger tabacco companies
| that shut out newer companies. Demand remained constant
| because it's a drug...That might work for other drug like
| coffee or pop/soda or social media but will not work for
| Tom's hardware and nails having an excess inventory of
| power drills
| tsimionescu wrote:
| People will still always need power drills and nails,
| even more so than cigarettes. Do you honestly believe the
| hardware industry would collapse if it were forced to
| stop advertising?
|
| Now, the biggest problem with advertising is that it is
| an arms race. If your competitors are advertising and you
| are not, or are investing significantly less than them,
| you're very unlikely to remain competitive for long
| (assuming the products are even vaguely similar in
| quality).
| ipaddr wrote:
| With a ban on advertising the biggest companies the ones
| we all know will benefit as no alternatives would be
| known. Some brands can spend endless amounts of money and
| I wouldn't purchase their product because of past
| experience or reputation.
|
| Banning advertising would collapse industries or reduce
| market size and limit any expansion efforts.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| > With a ban on advertising the biggest companies the
| ones we all know will benefit as no alternatives would be
| known.
|
| Why? If I go to a hardware store and see a new power tool
| on the shelves that looks sturdy and costs less than the
| existing ones, why would I not buy it, or at least look
| for reviews on it?
|
| Edit: this would be especially true in the longer term,
| as consumers start forgetting the marketing and there are
| no more "premium brands". In the near term after a ban,
| the older advertising still holds some sway, which of
| course creates a disadvantage for new brands. Still, a
| small price to pay for making the market more rational.
| withinboredom wrote:
| I've worked at two places that turned off Google ads for
| some number of months (except trademarked keywords they
| had a license for). There wasn't a significant change to
| sales or traffic.
| bzmrgonz wrote:
| I don't know about this, I suspect it depends on the
| product. What about that experiment AMAZON did down in
| Mexico, where it stopped advertising on google for 6
| months and their revenue tanked?
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Advertisers have done more to attack my ego and self
| image than 4chan or Qanon, or any other fuckwit internet
| forum ever has.
| ajl666 wrote:
| Define advertising by segmenting off of Poetry, Prose,
| and Aphorism.
|
| You can't. I don't understand how so many engineers can't
| do basic logic.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Advertising is "pay someone to say/show something about
| your product", where "pay" can refer to any kind of
| payment. It's really really easy to separate,
| conceptually, from any other discourse.
|
| Now, there are situations where this is more ambiguous,
| and in general any display of a company's products or
| brands, especially one that is not critical, is suspect
| of being advertisement for that brand.
|
| I'm not even sure how you can even claim that there is
| any sort of ambiguity between, say, The Raven and a Super
| Bowl commercial.
| waynesonfire wrote:
| > who never needed it in the first place
|
| Absolutely. How else are you going to grow 15% YoY or hit
| your sales quotas?
| InCityDreams wrote:
| In a funny kind of way, I'd rather have unsolvable problems
| than be advertised at.
|
| If the problems actually need solving, ill go looking.
|
| If I'm not looking, there's no problem (to be solved).
| deltree7 wrote:
| Newsflash: There are unknown, unknowns.
|
| The vast majority of the population, they don't even know
| there are solutions that would change their life.
|
| E.g: In a world of 8,000,000,000 how many people know
| that there is Coursera which has top-level courses that
| can change their lives, improve productivity and make
| impact?.
|
| "I know everything, don't tell me. I'll ask" is exactly
| the attitude that prevents learning (and prevents people
| from knowing about coursera). You are just advertising
| that personality to the rest of the world
| tsimionescu wrote:
| > In a world of 8,000,000,000 how many people know that
| there is Coursera which has top-level courses that can
| change their lives, improve productivity and make
| impact?.
|
| I would bet there are more people who know Coursera
| exists than people whose lives would literally change if
| they took a few Coursera courses (though that doesn't
| mean that there aren't _some_ people whose lives _could_
| be changed by Coursera if they knew about it).
|
| However, seeing an Ad for Coursera is not likely to help
| anyone find out whether Corusera can actually help them
| or not - since there is absolutely no way to tell from an
| ad whether the product being presented is going to be
| even close to fit for purpose. The only thing the ad
| tells you that can be trusted is "Coursera is a company
| that is trying to sell online courses" (note: that
| doesn't mean that they actually _provide_ online courses,
| you can only trust that they are trying to sell them -
| see the myriads of ads for mobile puzzle games whose
| gameplay has literally no relation to the game play shown
| in the ad).
|
| Note: I'm not trying to take potshots at Coursera here -
| they are a reputable business and have many good courses
| - which I know from my own and friends' personal
| experiences. I'm trying to look objectively of what an ad
| for a company you know nothing about can actually tell
| you.
| ajl666 wrote:
| Seems obvious. I agree. However I think you're not going
| to get through to those with central planning biases. By
| which I mean, the notion that perfect planning can beat
| the market.
|
| The Palace Economy central planner says, "give me wheat."
| The Soviet central planner says, "more steel comrades."
| The American style technocrat planner says, "we will tell
| you what you want and then deny market alternatives."
|
| I think there's no reasoning with these people
| int_19h wrote:
| How, exactly, each person deciding on their own whether
| to look or not look for information on a particular
| subject matter translates to economic centralization?
| It's the other way around - the ads, with their push
| model, naturally produce centralization, which is why we
| have the duopoly this article is about.
| ajl666 wrote:
| Hey downvoter. If the point is so weak, surely you can
| refute my moronic self with some cunning argument.
|
| Why are so many information scientists afraid of
| information?
| tsimionescu wrote:
| You're not making any points, and your comments are
| written to be inflammatory (unlike deltree7's, who is
| clearly advancing the conversation, even if I don't agree
| with them).
| [deleted]
| suoduandao2 wrote:
| I saw a commentary on education - I think on HN actually
| - where the writer was suggesting that the prime
| directive for each student should be 'know thyself'.
| Advertisers know me in a shallow way only, and they
| aren't really served by knowing me in a deep way - they
| need to know me well enough to know if I might buy a
| given product, the why of that is immaterial to them (and
| they have no direct access to it anyway).
|
| There is an ideal world where everyone spends a lot of
| time getting to know themselves on an intimate level and
| then broadcasts their very personal desires to an
| advertising industrial complex, which finds the solutions
| to these deep and difficult-to-articulate drives. But the
| advertiser can't realistically get that kind of
| information on anyone. I know that's not what advertisers
| claim, but I'm confident in calling bullshit on what they
| say about knowing their customers. They can't even tell
| when they're irritating someone to the point of
| installing an adblock, and they're supposed to know what
| self-actualization looks like to each of their many
| customers? I ain't even renting that.
|
| I agree with the basic premise that advertising can be a
| force for good. But the advertisee _has_ to be an active
| participant, else the advertiser will reliably determine
| that the target 's telos is 'maximize shareholder value
| for <advertiser>'.
| einpoklum wrote:
| The thing is, the mass of advertising isn't about helping
| you know the unknown unknowns, it's about manipulating
| you into wanting things you know about, more, or wanting
| things you don't need / wouldn't really want in a fair
| evaluation.
|
| The thing is, in our society, institutions mostly develop
| venues for advertising rather than for listing - since
| both the owners of the venue and the entities offering
| products/services have overarching profit motives, and
| advertising is more profitable.
| NumberCruncher wrote:
| > it's about manipulating you into wanting things you
| know about, more
|
| you just described the ad retargeting industry, like
| Criteo
| ajl666 wrote:
| How is that definition of advertising different from
| language and symbol?
|
| Would an Icelandic saga be considered an advertisement
| for murder?
|
| You really have not thought this through.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Are you aware that advertising is explicitly defined in
| law, and already regulated, even in the USA?
|
| In fact, the definition is extremely simple: if a company
| payed you (with money, free product, free trips etc) to
| say or show something about their product, that is
| advertising, regardless of what you are saying or of
| whether you believe it. No more, no less.
|
| Note: some countries extend this to any display or
| mention of branding, whether payed for or not, at least
| in broadcast media. So, for example in my country, a TV
| show has to blur out brands on bottles of water or cars
| shown, or display an explicit "this is advertising" logo
| on the screen while the branding is shown.
| batch12 wrote:
| > The vast majority of the population, they don't even
| know there are solutions that would change their life.
|
| > I know everything, don't tell me. I'll ask" is exactly
| the attitude that prevents learning
|
| This feels parental-- a version of mommy knows best. Why
| not let me, by default, decide if I want personalized
| advertisements? What if I want to be ignorant in regards
| to the new fad product? What if I don't want companies to
| mine my interests, location, prior searches, etc just to
| tell me that coursera exists? Advertisers are afraid of
| using an opt-in model because they _know_ most people won
| 't do it.
| FridgeSeal wrote:
| The best solution for the argument that "ads help people
| find stuff when they do go looking", is an ad-directory.
|
| Want to buy some new clothes and shoes soon? Go to an ad
| directory and browse the offerings - it's beneficial for
| everyone. Users, because they're getting what they want
| (when and how they want it) and for providers too: their
| audience are self-selecting their target, they have high
| intent to buy. This would make actual advertising
| cheaper, brands would get more creative freedom (have to
| stick out more, have to help your target market quickly
| identify you and you don't need to spend oodles of time
| and money setting up complicated arms-race-sequence AI
| targeting run by a duopoly of "totally trustworthy
| companies"). Users are happy because they're freed from
| the cognitive burden of constant harassment.
| geoduck14 wrote:
| >If the problems actually need solving, ill go looking.
|
| What if you _are_ looking, but an advertisement helps you
| find it faster?
|
| As an example, I was shopping for a keyboard the other
| day. I spent several hours looking through different
| specs. It would be handy if a website would have popped
| up "hey, here are the 3 you are probably looking for,
| pick one!".
|
| The benefit would have been for me (less time looking)
| and for three site (less server time serving pages to me)
| Larrikin wrote:
| In my experience all three options are usually crap and I
| would have been better served doing my own research.
|
| The only time advertising has been of use to me is
| advertising clothing. It's an extremely saturated market,
| so searching for "cool t shirt" or "nice jeans" is
| worthless. Before COVID I would go to a nice area in
| Tokyo, NYC, or some other major city and just load up
| when it was time to buy new clothes.
|
| I block most ads, but a couple ads have gotten through
| over the years and I've learned about new brands or
| atleast new styles and had a jumping off point.
|
| I still feel I am way better off blocking as many ads as
| I can, but can't say they've been completely worthless.
|
| Most of the HN crowd can't fathom the idea of spending
| money on clothing outside of necessity. Shirts that will
| last ten years is more popular of a topic than shirts
| that actually look good.
| plorkyeran wrote:
| When I am looking to buy something, ads actively get in
| the way of that. Ads are why we don't have websites that
| tell you "these are the 3 options you're probably looking
| for" any more because people figured out that they can
| make sites like that where the three choices are just ads
| rather than good recommendations. There's been times when
| I've simply given up on buying something because I got
| sick of wading through ads looking for any actual
| information.
| piva00 wrote:
| > There's been times when I've simply given up on buying
| something because I got sick of wading through ads
| looking for any actual information.
|
| It's happening more and more often to me. I've been
| caught on this spiral of mistrust ever more often, even
| when wading through what once was a good place for human
| reviews: reddit.
|
| I can't tell anymore what's an honest review to a paid
| one, be it affiliate links bullshit all the way to
| astroturfing on social media, it's exhausting.
| int_19h wrote:
| You basically want an oracle. That's fine, but none of
| what you just described requires a push model - you have
| a specific query, "best keyboard for me", so what you
| want is a service where you can _go and explicitly ask
| that question_ , and get an accurate answer.
|
| OTOH if an ad popped up and said "here's the best
| keyboard for you" - or even "here's the top 3 choices for
| you" - would you seriously trust that?
| marssaxman wrote:
| > Advertising is actually an optimal / scalable way for
| companies to reach you.
|
| I don't need companies to reach me - that's _their_
| problem.
|
| > I bet there are products that solves a lot of your
| current problems at a decent price.
|
| I bet not. The problems I care about are not solvable with
| products. Even if there were unknown products I might be
| willing to learn about, the problems they solve would
| necessarily be minor things relative to the primary
| concerns of my life, and I will _very happily_ forego the
| opportunity to discover them in order to shut down the
| overwhelming firehose of inane, manipulative toutery.
| jen20 wrote:
| This attitude is why I hope government crushes the
| advertising industry. No one is entitled to my information
| to sell me shit. No one.
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| If I have a know I have problem, I'll look for a solution
| myself, and perform an objective comparison. I don't need
| some marketing asshat's stilted sales copy designed to con
| idiots into buying.
|
| Convincing people who are happy that they have problems
| they need to spend money to solve for your personal benefit
| is morally dubious at best.
| deltree7 wrote:
| Unknown Unknowns.
|
| How would you let people people know that they may be
| prone to cancer?
|
| How can you inform the world population that there exists
| coursera that teaches you skills on any imaginable
| subject that may change their lives?
|
| Most people aren't looking for those categories of
| information.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| > _How would you let people people know that they may be
| prone to cancer?_
|
| Provide universal healthcare and continuing education for
| doctors.
|
| Advertisers sure as shit aren't the answer.
| deltree7 wrote:
| Pray tell me how would you provide Universal Healthcare
| for someone in Kenya or Bangladesh.
|
| HN is full of elitist arm-chair critics, whose life is so
| good that they need to feel persecuted by ........
| Advertisements. OMG
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| don't you form an opinion by looking at reviews made by
| the idiots conned by those asshats?
| ajl666 wrote:
| It's too subtle a point. The argument here is not about
| logic, but about intellectual honesty.
|
| The parent you replied to believes everybody else is
| unduly influenced by 'asshats' and that his/her favored
| influencers are not 'asshats.' As if Ezra Pound or Edmund
| Teller weren't 'asshats' for nuclear explosive mining, or
| fascism.
|
| Dismissing advertisers for being into the 'filthy lucre?'
| So what should we do with all the engineers doing the
| same?
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Some of the reviewers were conned, some weren't, but they
| actually have the product in front of them and they're
| generally honest.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Unfortunately the prevalence of reviews in exchange for
| money or free product warps this significantly. In those
| cases, reviewers are being paid to con you with their
| bias, even if they're unaware.
| intrasight wrote:
| Not naive at all. Certainly, there are a billion products.
| Group by things that don't matter in the first analysis,
| and you probably knock it down one or two orders of
| magnitude. But the consumer knows what they need - and can
| tell Google. An educated consumer (can we grant them that)
| will find trusted review sites. That knocks the list down
| to like ten! At ten, the burden really shifts to the
| manufacturer to have a quality web site. This, in my
| opinion, is where most fail.
|
| I'll use a recent example of my own. I am in the market for
| new hardwood floors. Some Googling confirmed my believe
| that engineered hardwood floors are the best option. A
| couple of good review sites then told me the features that
| I should care about. From those I also found six candidate
| manufacturers.
|
| One of them seemed to have a nice product, but their web
| site was just awful and had literally no information. You
| had to download hard-copy PDF to get any info - and good
| luck there. The others were better. One really stood out in
| the breadth and depth of information provided.
|
| Friday, I emailed the four that made the short-list asking
| for more information in the context of my specific project.
| [deleted]
| icelancer wrote:
| Making the best mouse trap and assuming this creates a great
| business is the first fallacy of enterpreneurship.
| ajl666 wrote:
| ekianjo wrote:
| nope. awareness comes before product quality. advertising is
| not going away.
| addicted wrote:
| This is not even close to true.
|
| If you don't pay Google/Facebook you're absolutely screwed.
| You will lose no matter how good the product is.
|
| What this actually means is that now companies have to pay a
| Google/Meta tax simply to enter the playing field. And once
| they enter the playing field. And once you enter the playing
| field, the only winners will be the ones who pay them the
| highest amount of money.
|
| So a smaller business, which in the past could potentially
| use some ingenuity, or target a specific niche audience to
| get some traction and then build word of mouth and let the
| product do the talking, doesn't even stand a chance now
| because they simply cannot differentiate themselves as your
| exposure is entirely dependent on how much money you give
| Google/Meta.
| jimbokun wrote:
| How does anyone know you have a useful product?
| TheRealPomax wrote:
| I would venture a guess that companies that already made
| quality products are entirely unaffected by this, it's
| companies pushing shit that only sells thanks to ads that get
| hit, and: good. I hope those all go out of business.
| ravenstine wrote:
| The Google laughs maniacally in response and says:
|
| "No, no... we're not competing with _ad_ firms. We 're about
| bringing products to users before there's even a need to
| advertise them."
| simfree wrote:
| I have given up on Google AdWords due to the exact issue you
| describe.
|
| Trying to restrict my advertising budget to just one city and
| do a hard geographic restriction to just US IP addresses did
| not work. I filed 5 tickets over two weeks with Google trying
| to get this resolved, only to have over half my budget spent in
| another continent making impressions with people that will
| literally never buy the local specific product advertised.
| cj wrote:
| There's a hidden setting when configuring geo on campaigns.
|
| By default it's set to "People -interested- in your target
| location" . You need to change it to "People who are -in-
| your target location".
|
| This setting is hidden under a toggle, so it's very easy to
| miss. Definitely a dark pattern and results in a lot of
| garbage clicks if you overlook that setting.
|
| This is just one of many dark patterns which makes Google Ads
| effective only for people willing to spend the time tuning
| and tweaking every single setting.
|
| A big part of the problem is Google themselves - they say
| always use "broad" keyword matches (and of course it's the
| default). Broad matches are really not good for most
| campaigns unless you have an extremely large budget, yet if
| you read their documentation they heavily encourage it.
|
| While we're at it...
|
| 1) Never enable the "auto apply recommendations" setting. If
| you do, it gives Google free reign to modify your campaigns
| (this has always resulted in worse performance and more spend
| in my experience)
|
| 2) Never listen to a google ads rep if they call. Once you're
| spending enough, they'll call you every week trying to
| convince you to change various settings. 95% of the time
| their advice is just plain bad. The quality of the advice
| does increase once you're spending enough and get assigned
| more senior reps. But even the senior reps are there to get
| you to spend more money, their job is not to make your
| campaigns more effective, "ad specialists" are simply sales
| people in disguise.
| _HMCB_ wrote:
| Gold advice. Thank you.
| mwexler wrote:
| I've seen this little "handy feature" bite every company
| I've ever consulted or worked with.
| viraptor wrote:
| > Definitely a dark pattern and results in a lot of garbage
| clicks if you overlook that setting.
|
| I really don't get this part. What's Google's interest in
| pointless clicks? Short term they could get some extra
| charge for those, but if they don't convert they lose a
| customer. On the other hand, for quality clicks they could
| just charge 5x the price and nobody would complain.
| ttty wrote:
| Let's say with your optimised settings your ROI is 20%.
| With Google settings is 15%.
|
| An end user might say 15% is pretty good and don't touch
| it.
|
| Google just earned 5% by giving you worst ROI.
|
| If you start comparing with other ad providers you'l you
| might notice you're being screwed. But low spenders
| rarely do proper checks.
| 1024core wrote:
| > What's Google's interest in pointless clicks? Short
| term they could get some extra charge for those
|
| Because there are humans in the loop, and "Google" isn't
| a monolithic all-seeing entity. Sales guys, devs, etc.
| are rewarded on a quarterly (or yearly) basis, and short-
| term gains are prioritized over long-term effects ( I
| mean, how _do_ you measure the fact that, say, after
| getting 9 months of pointless clicks, the advertiser
| decided to cut their Adwords budget by 30%?)
|
| So, someone runs an experiment (replace the obvious radio
| button with a hidden drop-down box, say), the clicks on
| the advertiser's ads go up, so the experiment increases
| revenue week-over-week by, say, 3%; and voila, everyone
| involved gets a pat on the back and a nice phat bonus
| come the next eval cycle, and maybe a promotion too.
| LaundroMat wrote:
| > "I mean, how _do_ you measure the fact that, say, after
| getting 9 months of pointless clicks, the advertiser
| decided to cut their Adwords budget by 30%?"
|
| Oh man, this is _the_ problem with metrics. We must find
| a way to measure and demonstrate aversion (instead of
| conversion).
| pentae wrote:
| Money. Their interest is Money. They need to offload
| those garbage clicks that nobody wants to buy to
| customers who aren't experts at ad buying.
| acdha wrote:
| > Short term they could get some extra charge for those,
| but if they don't convert they lose a customer.
|
| They _might_ lose a customer -- I suspect that they've
| determined that enough people either simply don't review
| their results closely or increase their spending to make
| it a net profit for them to do this. That would fit with
| the general pattern of hubris you see in many of their
| decisions where they've been coasting on their old
| reputation for at least a decade and don't seem to be
| fully aware of just how much loyalty they've sacrificed.
| galaxyLogic wrote:
| Plus they are a near monopoly/duopoly. So if the customer
| spends for wasted clicks they still get some good clicks
| as well. Google could optimize it for them better but the
| customer can not really tell if they could get a better
| result by some other means.
| ishjoh wrote:
| this would explain why when i was doing an ad spend for my
| SAAS even though I limited it to the US all the users came
| from a different country as confirmed by a third party that
| tracked where users were from. This is brutal
| justinbaker84 wrote:
| These are excellent tips. I have been managing Google Ads
| full time for about 12 years and I run a small agency. I
| can confirm he is right about all of this.
|
| The challenging thing about this advice is that for most
| people it feels unnatural to do the opposite of what Google
| recommends. Usually people need to get ripped off a few
| times before they accept that fact that Google is no longer
| a good actor.
| Melatonic wrote:
| Google wants to make more money - of course they may not
| be giving you the best advice for your company :-)
|
| What I have found works best is to always start playing
| around with the most restricted type of ads. So restrict
| by location, test, restrict to the most exact keyword or
| semi exact (instead of general), do not use common words
| as much as possible (or quote phrases instead of single
| words), etc etc.
| propogandist wrote:
| Google's reps routinely "take care" of big agency staff
| and show them a good time while feeding them the same
| "spend optimization" suggestions.
|
| The agency staff can then claim the campaigns were
| optimized based on Google's suggestions, which is the
| perfect smokescreen.
|
| Most big brands that outsource media buying don't have
| SMEs to audit the media buying they've outsourced, so the
| result is Google makes a ton of money via their preferred
| middleman, advertising agencies.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| Like, everyone in the industry shows agency reps a good
| time. Back a decade ago, FB reps used to get the clients
| drunk the night before they'd see Google on the principle
| that they'd remember less.
|
| However it's worth pointing out that Google as an org
| have absolutely hated ad agencies for many years, in fact
| being nice to the agencies was a strategy used by FB when
| I was there.
|
| I'm not disputing your point about optimisations, but the
| notion that Google like ad agencies is just ludicrous.
| bzmrgonz wrote:
| I think the problem may be in the "performance
| compensation" built into their "experts" portfolio.
| justinbaker84 wrote:
| You are absolutely right. I worked at a big agency where
| I managed a team that ran the search ads for a fortune
| 500 tech company. That was usually how it worked. I tried
| to communicate up the chain that the dinners and outings
| on Google's dime are a clear conflict of interest, but
| nobody wanted to hear it.
|
| By far the most dissapointing thing was that the client
| often just wanted to go with Google's recomendations or
| they had even worse ideas. Even when we really tried to
| look out for the best interests of the client it was like
| fighting an uphill battle both ways.
|
| Another problem is that anything that isn't direct
| response is hard to measure so it's tough to make a clear
| and compelling case. Anybody can chalk up any hare
| brained idea to brand value and it is tough to push back
| on that when the client doesn't really care.
| kakoni wrote:
| Wow, thank you for these. And while at it, HN crowd , Any
| other tips/tricks/settings that would be beneficial for
| small business owner?
| fxtentacle wrote:
| After I got burned with Google and Facebook, I had
| excellent results with Reddit.
| geomark wrote:
| "Never listen to a google ads rep if they call."
|
| Excellent advice. I was helping manage an Adwords campaign
| for an online shop, only had search ads turned on, was
| carefully watching and tweaking ads and managed to get a
| pretty decent CTR which had a big impact on cost per click.
|
| I was in a different time zone (15 hours ahead) than the
| company. I went to bed one night and next morning I checked
| and found that our CTR had gone through the floor, was way
| less than 1%. And as a result our cost per click had sky
| rocketed from 10 to 15 cents to several dollars.
|
| Turns out that a Google ads rep had called the office and
| convinced someone to turn on display ads, which killed our
| CTR. Our advertising budget was depleted, our Adwords
| account had received the dreaded low CTR slap which meant
| it would be very costly/impossible to get CTR back to a
| reasonable level. We were done with Adwords.
|
| Things may have changed since then. It was years ago and I
| haven't touched Adwords since.
| jpadkins wrote:
| There are some misconceptions here (i.e. display CTR
| effects search ads quality score)
|
| Here are some direct from the source help pages that
| might clear up your understanding of the system.
| https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/156066
| https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/6167118
| gunapologist99 wrote:
| The GP does not appear to have any misconceptions.
|
| From your first link, "how relevant your ad text is to
| searches, how likely people are to click your ad, and the
| quality of their experience once they reach your landing
| page"
|
| This is all data that's generated based on the overall
| learning that Adwords does against your site presence.
| It's why it takes weeks to really get your data settled
| in, and why if you (or your Google rep) start to
| mismanage your account, things will rapidly go bad.
| andyferris wrote:
| > which meant it would be very costly/impossible to get
| CTR back to a reasonable level
|
| Sorry - is there some kind of hysteresis? You can't
| revert the setting and get back to exactly where you
| started?
| geomark wrote:
| Once you have thousands of ad impressions with very few
| clicks, it takes thousands of new impressions at a very
| high CTR to get your overall account's CTR back to
| something reasonable. And now that your cost per click
| has skyrocketed, even if you can get a high CTR for the
| new impressions your cost has skyrocketed.
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| That's a sampling bias. You are confusing how your
| metrics are affected by the adverse event with how your
| metrics are now.
| geomark wrote:
| No confusion. I've been through this with several
| accounts I helped manage. Once an account has a history
| of low CTR the CPC goes up. Starting a new campaign
| doesn't help; the CPC stays high until you can get the
| CTR back up. And that costs dearly.
|
| But again, that was years ago. Things may have changed.
| gunapologist99 wrote:
| Unfortunately, things have not changed. You are 100%
| correct. If anything, things have gotten worse, because
| now we have even fewer options to manage accounts.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| So there's no way to set over which period the metrics
| are calculated?
|
| Or is it a thing where the client only cares about the
| default metrics calculated over the full history of an
| account?
| sokoloff wrote:
| It's on Google's end. "I have inventory (a placement) to
| sell to an advertiser. I can sell it to X with a CTR of
| (10% or 1%) and a CPC of $0.50 or to Y with a CTR of 3%
| and a CPC of $1."
|
| Whether X's CTR is 10% (what it used to be) or 1% (what
| it is now) drives the decision of which ad is better to
| serve in that inventory slot.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Same exact thing happened to me when launching a product that
| was only available in the US.
|
| For whatever reason, Google was showing my ads to people on
| the other side of the planet and then taking my money for the
| privilege.
| jiggawatts wrote:
| That sounds like fraud. Why not take Google to court?
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Because I'm wary of litigation and unfortunately depend
| on Google for some of my business. I assume litigation
| would mean being removed from their platforms.
| justinbaker84 wrote:
| Because any challenge will lose. It is in their terms of
| service that what they are doing is legal. But nobody is
| going to read 70+ of legalese just to set up a campaign.
|
| The issue is that they have not been good faith actors
| for many years now.
|
| As explained by other comments above there is a hidden
| setting you need to change to get Google to actually run
| your ads in the areas you selected.
| discordance wrote:
| Legislation and a companies terms of service are very
| different things.
| idontpost wrote:
| > It is in their terms of service that what they are
| doing is legal
|
| I don't know what you're trying to say, but that sentence
| is complete nonsense.
|
| You can't make an illegal action legal by putting it in a
| contract.
| drc500free wrote:
| There isn't any precedent that confusing UX is illegal,
| is there? If a user enables "interested in NYC" when they
| mean "browsing from NYC" is a judge going to get
| involved?
| solarmist wrote:
| There absolutely is. Fraudulent misrepresentation and
| concealment.
|
| If they are purposely making it difficult to understand
| and choose options then that can be a form of fraud.
| drc500free wrote:
| Is there any precedent of someone proving fraudulent
| concealment based on a confusing UX?
| solarmist wrote:
| I believe so, but I know various SaaS's cancellation UX's
| have been litigated.
| Closi wrote:
| You can sign away certain rights or accept certain terms
| that would otherwise open avenues for a legal claim
| though, which is effectively what OP means I think.
| acdha wrote:
| > Because any challenge will lose. It is in their terms
| of service that what they are doing is legal.
|
| I don't think that's even close to a given, but consider
| how much time and money it would take to fight that
| lawsuit -- they would be loathe to settle since it'd
| validate the idea for other customers, and you'd have to
| put in that effort hoping that they wouldn't succeed in
| being able to say it was a misunderstanding on your part
| or some nebulous "bug" which has reportedly been fixed.
| Most people don't lose anywhere near enough money this
| way for it to be worth fighting, especially since a lot
| of businesses would be worried about potentially being
| demoted on Google Maps, search, etc.
| withinboredom wrote:
| They may be "technically" abiding by their contract, but
| this is why judges are humans. Fraud is fraud.
| dd36 wrote:
| It doesn't matter if it's in the ToS if everything else
| misrepresents and misleads the user. Or regularly gets
| changed to undermine the user's expectations. That's bad
| faith, fraud, etc.
| ipaddr wrote:
| You funding the lawsuit?
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| I think this is a bigger signal than anyone appreciates
|
| If google is making it harder for people to spend money on
| ads, something is either seriously broken or alphabet figured
| out another way to make money that isn't ads
| dr-detroit wrote:
| missedthecue wrote:
| I have had the opposite experience. I have tried many
| different ad networks for my product and the only two that
| work are Google and Bing, but Bing has very low volume.
| Facebook's bounce rate is about 80%. I get billed for so many
| accidental clicks.
|
| Most other non-faang ad networks are hot garbage. So many
| bots. In my view, Google has a "monopoly" not because of
| anti-competitive behaviour... It's because they have the best
| ad product.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Do you know if you get charged for misclicks that are
| blocked by pihole? I have googletagservices blocked, so I
| _think_ it should prevent google from using me as an excuse
| to defraud you.
| missedthecue wrote:
| Good question, I'm not sure. But very few of my targeted
| advertising base are going to have piholes configured, so
| that specifically is not impacting _my_ numbers.
|
| I can understand that people are going to have ad-
| blockers or just accidentally click ads, but it's scummy
| that FB charges me for it. They have the technical means
| to filter those out, but they don't.
| midhhhthrow wrote:
| Not surprising at all. Just as a mobile user, on websites,
| I don't think I've ever intentionally clicked on any ad.
| Every fricken time it's by accident because some stupid pop
| up or overlay was in the way of closing a modal or ad box.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| I do wonder, who are these people that intentionally
| click on ads?
| dazc wrote:
| Competitors of the advertiser
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| Regular, non technology focused humans, mostly.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| AdNauseam users. Such a brilliant extension.
| olyjohn wrote:
| I just said 'fuck it' the other day, and started clicking
| on all ads that show up on my Facebook feed.
| asdff wrote:
| How many toolbars do you have installed now?
| AJ007 wrote:
| I think there is probably a record breaking class action
| lawsuit here with the right lawyers. Damages could be 50-100%
| of Google's yearly gross revenue, especially when you include
| countries outside on the US who really don't like Google.
|
| Google intentionally modified both geo-targeting and mobile
| app targeting, removing the options advertisers set. For
| example, you opted out of mobile app targeted. Then they
| removed the option and you had to set it in the domain
| blacklist. Then they removed that. This wasn't a one off,
| hid, modified, and moved these options repeatedly.
|
| Advertisers didn't know that when you geo-targeted a
| location, by default it was set to users searching that
| location. You didn't want people in India who were interested
| in NYC? Too bad.
|
| Remember the whole Adwords prescription drug settlement. This
| is an organization run by people who would be serving hard
| time if they didn't have a legion of lawyers and bottomless
| pockets.
| sailfast wrote:
| Perhaps, but I'm sure there's a forced arbitration clause
| buried in a EULA somewhere...
| carlhjerpe wrote:
| The government in Sweden could call a too crappy EULA
| non-enforceable. It's like the anticompetitive clauses
| that I happily sign over here because they don't hold in
| court, which employers are well aware of.
| xxs wrote:
| >restrict my advertising budget to just one city
|
| This is not possible unless the end user are willing to
| provide geo tracking for your convenience. The IP of the
| phone is the one of a datacenter, and it can be in any state
| (speaking about the US) - heck, in some cases, there could be
| multiple outgoing IPs in different datacenterss, different
| states.
|
| It's just a fallacy and wishful thinking... unless google
| combines the geo location data where the user has been logged
| with the browser one. Which, of course it is.
| bzmrgonz wrote:
| In this respect, I think cable companies are missing an
| apportunity, they should embrace and monetize geo-location.
| They are the only ones who can categorize us by income
| bracket (relatively speaking... house/neighborhood=income
| bracket). This has huge potential to become a targeted
| premium ad conduit.
| Covzire wrote:
| That's ridiculous, isn't selecting a target market
| Marketing/Econ 101? What possible reason would they have for
| not giving some kind of locality options?
| ipaddr wrote:
| Everyone wants US visitors so by including other countries
| it brings up the inventory of people looking/clicking ads
| which brings down the price per click which creates more ad
| spending
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Google Knows Best(tm) and lack of real competition or
| regulation means they can do whatever they want.
| MarkMc wrote:
| Maybe it's simply a bug, and nobody in Google is motivated
| to fix it.
| prepend wrote:
| I remember talking to some friends in Google and but
| estimated their error/fraud rate to be about 1/3 of ad
| revenue.
|
| But they have no motivation to fix it and no one outside
| Google has the data to tell.
| zx8080 wrote:
| If the "fix" results in less profit, then sure no one
| will get promoted for this. So no motivation to fix.
| bzmrgonz wrote:
| I wonder if there is a way to play with the url submit
| string, you know, entering fields which don't have a UX
| selection. I use to do this with FB and Craigslist, leave
| the search criteria, and change the locale. In facebook,
| it was more the search string copy paste to groups(this
| was before marketplace). These hacks should come in handy
| if someone can hunt them down. Espeially the geo-tagging
| and the income-bracket (I am sure there is an income-
| bracket criteria in their big "benevolent" database...
| lol
| htrp wrote:
| There is an income bracket.... and almost every possible
| interest subsegement
|
| look up google ad affinity groups
| withinboredom wrote:
| I have seen this play out so many times over the years,
| "if we fix this bug, our revenue will go down X%" and no
| one will fix it. Ever. Any redesigns or redacts that fix
| this bug will probably fail A/B testing unless they
| account for this bug. It holds back the entire company
| from making real progress with the product, all for a few
| extra bucks.
| galaxyLogic wrote:
| It's funny it's like intentionally putting a feature that
| did this would make you guilty, but if it's just a bug
| then nobody can blame you for not fixing it.
|
| Most software licenses say the software is sold "as is",
| so if there are bugs you can't complain.
| 6510 wrote:
| It is not like having a monopoly on finding customers
| combined with not finding customers is going to have any
| economic effect.
|
| It is also entirely fine if IT is leading the US economy
| where IT is a bunch of guys playing ping pong.
|
| Companies can just dig a little deeper into their
| pockets, customers can pay a bit more for products.
| Specially nowadays everyone has plenty of money and the
| economy is solid as a rock.
|
| It is the responsible thing to do.
| rchaud wrote:
| Marketing 101 would teach you to investigate your target
| market yourself, not simply select from a dropdown and
| assume that the automated real-time bidding platform will
| have taken that off your plate.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| That's great to hear
|
| In my view advertising can't end fast enough, but my worry is
| that our economy is so tied to advertising as a model that it
| would cause a deep depression - as spending would shift and
| slow down to a halt.
|
| Psychopaths with money that want to trick people into doing
| what they want will always seek out the most targeted way to
| manipulate people.
|
| If there's a system that allows advertising psychopaths more
| granularity in their attempts to burrow into your brain they
| will be all over it, until all the competitive advantage is
| burned out and then they will hop to whatever gives them even
| better advantage
|
| My evil genius idea in 2016 was to eventually just inspect
| every piece of trash that people throw away (legally possible)
| to build the most personalized and predictive profile of a
| consumer possible without strapping a camera to them, which is
| the ultimate goal.
| int_19h wrote:
| > our economy is so tied to advertising as a model that it
| would cause a deep depression - as spending would shift and
| slow down to a halt.
|
| Would it, though? I can't think of the last thing I bought
| because I've seen it in an ad. There certainly were some, but
| I'd be surprised if it all added up to even 1% of what I
| spent on products and services.
| davewritescode wrote:
| I 100% agree with this sentiment. I think we're going to be
| transitioning back to more personalized marketing with CRM and
| email and SMS as channels. It seems to be happening already as
| there's lots of startups in this space.
|
| Search advertising is in real trouble, it's one of the reasons
| I sold my Alphabet shares a year ago. I see long term headwinds
| in this space. I don't doubt Google can engineer their way out
| of this, I'm just not willing the market has priced that risk
| in.
| hnick wrote:
| Yeah I found it quite hard as a novice to actually tell if my
| Facebook pixel stuff was all working and firing exactly as
| intended. The lack of data means it's hard to map a 1:1
| relationship for a certain visitor (me). "Luckily", our site
| was not successful so we could find some matches in the recent
| queries list... on a busier site it would have been hard to pin
| down.
|
| It still felt like a total money pit into which you toss
| offerings to a dark god which may or may not grant blessings.
| whatever1 wrote:
| But that is adverting in general. We have billboards, tv ads,
| paper ads, product placements. You have no clue how many
| people will buy because of these ads. But you burn your cash
| anyway.
| polygamous_bat wrote:
| > "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the
| trouble is I don't know which half." -- John Wanamaker
| (1838-1922)
| hnick wrote:
| The difference there - you can at least verify your ad is
| being _shown_ , even if it is not a guarantee of
| effectiveness, and use other estimates to see how many
| people see it such as foot traffic or TV viewership.
|
| I have no real way of knowing how many people see my online
| advertising, I just get a number and a bill, and I have to
| trust them. The pixel does help for visits but not views
| and other metrics.
| datavirtue wrote:
| I used to have a retail store on a busy state hiway in a
| congested area. We put out a used ragged-arse flashing
| arrow sign that just had keywords on it or maybe a few
| sentences for products we sold. That worthless piece of
| junk printed money.
|
| Road signs, sidewalk signs, and billboards are worth every
| penny.
|
| They work.
| [deleted]
| EGreg wrote:
| Yep, it is, and there are far better models out there.
|
| Here is just one of MANY possibilities:
| https://qbix.com/ecosystem#Decentralizing-the-Marketplace
| bosky101 wrote:
| Also check out https://perpetual.technology that pays you in
| crypto, to run open source decentralized software on your
| website/app or server.
|
| disclosure: i'm a co-founder
| tinus_hn wrote:
| Ultimately as ad blocking rises im pretty sure ad hosting and
| tracking as it is now will go the same way popups went and ads
| will end up within the content itself or included in the pages
| directly so they can't be blocked.
| candiodari wrote:
| I look forward to them first AI ad blockers then.
| Gtex555 wrote:
| ad blocking is not as popular as you think , I think 70-80%
| of people don't even use it especially on mobile.
| FounderBurr wrote:
| Advertising in general is just businesses grifting each other
| with false promises.
| adbro123 wrote:
| > what actual search terms people are using, proper visible
| conversion tracking of an ad
|
| I sympathize with this position. I operate a one stop shop for
| digital advertising for huge brands.
|
| First I agree that the regulations (the government ones and
| Apple's) have benefitted no one. This is in a sense totally
| factual, and I challenge the blowhards here to like, name one
| substantive harm someone has experienced from ad ID tracking on
| an iPhone. While I believe government regulations should be
| proactive, rather than reactive, I believe the sum total
| history of ad tracking has pretty much confirmed that there
| aren't any substantive harms to correlated ad IDs.
|
| From the perspective of advertisers:
|
| An enlightening explanation of the Google value ad I read came
| from another guy explaining how he advertised dev tools on
| Google. He created a YouTube ad so that Johnny Programmer,
| watching YouTube videos on a weekend, would see a demo of his
| devops tool because Johnny searched "how to connect git to
| kubernetes" or whatever in the previous 10 days. And those ads
| converted really well. Even though the YouTube video had no
| contextual relationship with the ad the user saw.
|
| So it sounds like you are complaining about the flaws in
| Google's tracking UI. Well, I guess e-mail them some more.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| > This is in a sense totally factual, and I challenge the
| blowhards here to like, name one substantive harm someone has
| experienced from ad ID tracking on an iPhone.
|
| You then give a perfect example right in the next paragraph:
|
| > so that Johnny Programmer, watching YouTube videos on a
| weekend, would see a demo of his devops tool because Johnny
| searched "how to connect git to kubernetes" or whatever in
| the previous 10 days.
|
| So now Johnny Programmer's work life is hounding him on
| weekends. Even worse, he is being influenced to buy a paid
| product to do something that could probably be easily
| achieved with open source tools as well.
| aidos wrote:
| To be fair, you should use different profiles for your work
| and personal digital lives.
|
| And if someone is likely to use an open source solution,
| they're also unlikely to be influenced to switch to a paid
| product based on an ad instead.
| kixiQu wrote:
| Why should I have to use a different "profile"?
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Advertising is actively working against this - trying to
| find ways to correlate your activity across as many
| devices and accounts as possible. Especially now that
| work from home, BYOD and ZeroTrust (which reduces the
| need for corporate VPNs) are all blurring the lines and
| giving new opportunities for correlation.
|
| > And if someone is likely to use an open source
| solution, they're also unlikely to be influenced to
| switch to a paid product based on an ad instead.
|
| This is assuming that the ad isn't promising something
| too good to be true, or using deceptive pricing to make
| it seem cheap enough to be better than the OSS, or using
| psychological tricks to try to override your rational
| choice (which may not work for this particular example,
| but may well work for many others).
| noizejoy wrote:
| > To be fair, you should use different profiles for your
| work and personal digital lives.
|
| Isn't that victim blaming?
| aidos wrote:
| I mean, I don't like it either and I'd rather we didn't
| have to take personal measures against this stuff.
|
| But I still use a password manager to protect myself
| online. I also use different profiles to split my work
| and home digital lives.
| senorrib wrote:
| If you make the example abstract you _might_ understand
| what the problem is.
| [deleted]
| tomcam wrote:
| > Well, I guess e-mail them some more.
|
| That will definitely work
| pnutjam wrote:
| user name checks out
| gerash wrote:
| Everyone is all gangster about privacy and their hatred for
| ads until they realize they need to pay for the services they
| use.
|
| Do you think all the uBlock origin and other "anti ad/pro
| privacy" folks really pay for, say, Youtube to remove ads
| when they use it. Of course not. Talk is cheap
| jen20 wrote:
| One absolute non starter is paying for any service which
| tracks and advertises anyway.
| int_19h wrote:
| I'm pro-privacy and anti-ad, and I block all ads on my home
| network. I have a YouTube Premium subscription. I also pay
| for Fastmail and Kagi. So I don't think that; I know that.
| Guvante wrote:
| > This is in a sense totally factual, and I challenge the
| blowhards here to like, name one substantive harm someone has
| experienced from ad ID tracking on an iPhone
|
| Building up a huge library of data about you in an
| unregulated fashion has never backfired on the public at
| large, oh wait those exact data warehouses have been
| continuous sources of pain for users.
|
| The reality is these breaches cost the business next to
| nothing. After all even if millions of users have <$100 worth
| of damages it is impossible to recover that. So the business
| did hundreds of millions of damages at no cost to itself.
| doktorhladnjak wrote:
| > I challenge the blowhards here to like, name one
| substantive harm someone has experienced from ad ID tracking
| on an iPhone
|
| The sense of entitlement from those on the other side of the
| ads business, and their disdain for what users might want or
| how they feel, shows exactly why this business and industry
| is broken. And frankly why the whole thing is being dragged
| down right now. Figure it out. Adapt. It's what every other
| business has to do all the time.
| sameadbro456 wrote:
| > Figure it out. Adapt.
|
| I understand this is a stylized opinion.
|
| There is actually a great deal of innovation in
| advertising! I don't think the ad ID tracking is going to,
| on net, matter. For example, Fortnite already has
| unavoidable branded advertising that doesn't require
| tracking at all to work. Native ads can't be blocked by
| uBlock.
|
| The big forces at play move around where advertising goes,
| but it doesn't really get rid of it or necessarily make it
| "better". Probably we should not allow advertising to kids,
| and yet here we are, Roblox and Fortnite branded
| experiences primarily for very young children! Thanks
| Obama.
|
| > disdain
|
| I don't know, I only have a jokey disdain for the end user.
| People have rehashed these arguments a million times. You
| can't just righteous your way into being right here. I
| would just say you didn't name any harms, and then you went
| and blew very hard.
| umanwizard wrote:
| You didn't answer his question, you just stated your own
| opinion.
| elondaits wrote:
| It was a question in bad faith. The central issue is the
| power asymmetry, whereas we don't know when we're
| tracked, by whom, or how our information is correlated.
| jacknews wrote:
| And what if you search for 'weird fetish' and those kinds of
| ads start popping up when you show a youtube video as part of
| presentation.
|
| People do not want to be tracked and then bombarded with the
| cloud's idea of who they are (right or wrong), they want to
| be in control.
| kingkawn wrote:
| One bad substantive harm from ad id tracking on iOS?
|
| Making zuck and google richer.
| timfsu wrote:
| Yes, but Zuck and Google get richer because companies are
| paying them for a valuable service. It's unclear that
| destroying that value helps anyone
| idontpost wrote:
| I can think of a few hundred people on Kaua'i that would
| be helped if Zuck fucked right off.
| callmeal wrote:
| >I challenge the blowhards here to like, name one substantive
| harm someone has experienced from ad ID tracking on an
| iPhone.
|
| How quickly we forget/forgot this proof of concept:
|
| http://ghostinfluence.com/the-ultimate-retaliation-
| pranking-...
| charcircuit wrote:
| So the harm is being able to send a message to someone?
| Messaging apps are not harmful and are some of the most
| popular apps that exist.
| [deleted]
| saagarjha wrote:
| > This is in a sense totally factual, and I challenge the
| blowhards here to like, name one substantive harm someone has
| experienced from ad ID tracking on an iPhone.
|
| Things don't have to cause obvious harm to still be
| inappropriate.
| Karunamon wrote:
| I would preferred the government regulation apparatus to be
| brought to bear against harms, both demonstrated and
| imminently likely, rather than mere inconvenience or
| "inappropriateness".
| sameadbro456 wrote:
| It's all tradeoffs at the end of the day. A better
| entertained, better informed public - enjoying their free
| IP paid by better ads - is worth the some-abstract-not-yet
| harms.
|
| That said I believe journalists are definitely getting
| fucked by the government, Google, Meta and even Apple, with
| the shit payouts of Apple News being unsustainable too. You
| misunderstand me, these giant corporations are definitely
| the antagonist.
|
| It's just not necessarily most advertisers, who just want
| to get you to buy shoes or whatever the fuck. Nobody forces
| you to buy anything. But someone has to feed the
| journalists.
| int_19h wrote:
| Blendle is a good example of how to feed journalists
| without having to tolerate ads.
| sammalloy wrote:
| > It's now just one big black box, you put money in one side
| and get traffic out the other. The control and useful tracking
| (what actual search terms people are using, proper visible
| conversion tracking of an ad) is now almost non-existent. As an
| advertiser your livelihood is dependant on an algorithm, not
| skill, not intuition, not experience, not even track record.
|
| Look, I'm about as anti-consumer at you can get, but whoever is
| in charge of advertising over at Instagram has me literally
| scared for my life. I want almost every product they try to
| sell me, and I've never been this targeted by any ad in my
| entire life. I even recently made a new purchase of shoes
| outside of Insta because of the influence their ads had on me.
| It's pretty fucking incredible.
| bamboozled wrote:
| What are you talking about sorry? I have absolutely no
| similar experience to this?
| ehnto wrote:
| In the more grass roots advertising industry we are seeing
| agencies move away from what can be called "performance
| marketing" in general, which entails the high volume low effort
| advertising channels such as google and facebook ads.
| Alternatives are more traditional, real world brand building
| and engaging with communities in a real sense, running events
| and getting involved in the spaces their customers are active.
|
| It shouldn't surprise anyone here that online advertising is
| wildly saturated and that users are unable to engage with
| thousands of brand voices a day.
| rs999gti wrote:
| Unless these competitors have something groundbreaking, Google
| and Meta can counter by undercutting ad spend pricing or
| acquiring potential rivals
| wharfjumper wrote:
| The main rivals referred to are Amazon, Microsoft and Apple so
| acquisition doesn't seem a realistic option.
| wharfjumper wrote:
| Since Apple, Microsoft and Amazon revenue mostly comes from non
| ad sources, a price war would weaken AlphaMeta relatively.
| nixcraft wrote:
| Is it just me, or do major tech companies turn into advertising
| businesses even for paid products like Windows OS[1] or
| iPhone/iOS[2]?
|
| [1] https://www.makeuseof.com/windows-11-remove-ads/
|
| [2]
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2022-08-14/apple-...
| [deleted]
| amelius wrote:
| This is at least as old as Smart TVs.
| cowtools wrote:
| this really punches a hole in the idea that "if you're not the
| customer, you're the product"
| yissp wrote:
| Newspapers, magazines, cable TV, product placement in films,
| ... even if you're paying you can definitely still be the
| product.
| daptaq wrote:
| To be fair, you can't deduce "A -> ~B" from "A -> B". You can
| be the customer and the product.
| cowtools wrote:
| But doesn't it imply that the only way to not be the
| product is to be the customer? In this case, we see that
| being the customer is insufficient to not be the product.
| daptaq wrote:
| No, being a product or a customer stand in no relation to
| one another. You can be neither, either, or both. If you
| don't want to be a product, you have to work on that, not
| on being a better customer.
| sneak wrote:
| No, the only way to not be the product is to not provide
| PII to big tech, or their downstreams that immediately
| shuttle your PII to big tech.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Advertising doesn't technically need PII, any kind of II
| is enough (PII typically refers to things like your name
| or face or address).
| sneak wrote:
| Every app these days requires your unique and unchanging
| advertising identifier to log in. You can't get an Apple
| ID or Google account, or order a pizza or make a dinner
| reservation without it.
|
| You might know it as your phone number.
| kibwen wrote:
| It doesn't punch a hole in it. If P implies Q, that doesn't
| mean the inverse of P implies the inverse of Q. If you're not
| the customer, you're the product. But if you are the
| customer, well, sometimes you're still the product.
| tshaddox wrote:
| It certainly diminishes the usefulness of the rule of thumb
| if you add "and you're still the product anyway even if
| you're paying" to the end of it.
| chucksmash wrote:
| Cogito ergo productum
| tsimionescu wrote:
| "Cogito ergo product sum" (I think therefore I am the
| product) would be closer to the original and more
| slightly-Latin-like.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| It doesn't help you not get screwed, but at least now you
| know why you're getting screwed. That's better than
| nothing.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| It was a dumb rule from the start. You paid for
| newspapers and still had ads in them, paid nothing for
| linux and was nothing part of the product.
| cowtools wrote:
| Sometimes you are neither the customer nor the product.
| (e.g. a service like wikpedia or a project like linux)
|
| I think the context in which the phrase "if you're not the
| customer, you're the product" is often used implies that we
| should upgrade our relationship by paying, however this is
| not necessarily the case as shown here.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| You're always the product unless you're using freedom
| respecting hardware and software. If you're a customer, it
| just means you paid for the privilege of being someone else's
| product.
| cowtools wrote:
| You're not the customer or the product: you're the
| developer.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Okay. I'd rather be the developer than the product.
| seydor wrote:
| You re the customer, and the product
| summerlight wrote:
| Technically, advertising business basically solves a market
| optimization problem, which means you can keep improving
| revenue/profit while your business structure remaining
| transparent to customers. This gives you a definite control on
| your business as well as removing lots of uncertainties. I have
| no doubt Apple or MS want to get their hands into the
| advertising business; how to do that is a different question
| though.
| simfree wrote:
| Apple already sells ads, and has been expanding where they
| show ads over time.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| It's not just you. The business model of many tech companies
| consists of creating digital fiefdoms to lock "their" users
| into and then selling access to "their" users. They sell access
| to "their" users to other software developers. They sell access
| to the attention of "their" users to advertisers.
|
| It's pretty disgusting and dehumanizing.
| goosedragons wrote:
| I reinstalled Windows 10 on a machine recently and like half
| the setup process is now ads for other Microsoft services or
| things related to ads. Do you want Office 365? OneDrive? Xbox
| Game Pass? Can we use your location for ads? Kind of
| ridiculous. I don't think there was any the first time I
| installed Win 10? Maybe just Office 365?
|
| I can't wait for Windows 13 when Microsoft has sold installer
| ads to the highest bidder and I'm asked if I want a case of
| Mountain Dew during install.
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| This is always so disappointing:
|
| https://www.digitalcitizen.life/wp-
| content/uploads/2020/08/w...
|
| The graphic says a thousand words.
|
| They casually want your credit card info, documents,
| schedule, calendar, conversations, what other people know
| about you, and what you search for.
|
| And that's just for Cortana.
| piaste wrote:
| And of course, the illustration with smiling Corporate
| Memphis zombies is the cherry on top.
| FearlessNebula wrote:
| Please drink a verification can
| tomcam wrote:
| OK that was really really good. Thank you.
| FearlessNebula wrote:
| Oh I can't take credit for that, it's from 4Chan:
| https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/983286-4chan
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| That's hilarious. It just keeps getting worse. It's like
| they have no self-awareness or limits.
| Liquix wrote:
| These corporations are not bastions of self-awareness nor
| moral fortitude. They are machines with the singular goal
| of making the red line go up. It will continue to get
| worse as long as people continue buying their products.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| That's funny. Whatever happened to vision and innovation?
| Improving the world and people's lives? Achieving great
| things through technology? Empowering people? I guess
| founders only talk about this stuff in the startup stage.
|
| If all these corporations will concern themselves with is
| "line go up" then it's time for society to step in and
| seriously constrain what they're allowed to do in order
| to drive that line up. Frankly, corporations making line
| go up by shoving advertising into everything everywhere
| aren't adding a lot of value. They're just increasing
| audiovisual pollution and that's an _extremely_
| charitable interpretation of their activities. What I
| actually think is they 're violating my mind every single
| time they show me an advertisement. My attention is mine,
| it's not theirs to sell off to the highest bidder. I
| couldn't care less how much money it costs them, it
| should be illegal for them to do it.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| The best way for society to step in is to stop buying
| shitty products!
|
| Consumers vote with their wallets and keep voting for
| more crap!
|
| Change OS, lean new software, try something new.
| Sir_Liigmaz wrote:
| tech giants have the moral-teflon of their bastardized
| implementation of DEI. So they're obviously just and
| benevolent. If you think they're ratfucking their
| customers, then you're just a bigot who's mad about the
| diversity but won't say it.
| dageshi wrote:
| Most of the most successful corporations/businesses have
| vision/innovation to begin with, they do create useful
| things that people didn't know they wanted but once they
| see it they do.
|
| After a while though, the business gets big enough that
| no new innovation can actually move the needle on the
| businesses revenues, the people at those companies who do
| have ideas are better off getting paid well for some
| period of time and then leaving to make it themselves.
|
| That's the stage google is in more or less, innovation
| won't move their bottom line very much so they're trying
| to extract as much as possible from their existing
| businesses, which basically means as many ads as possible
| in as many places as possible.
| jimbokun wrote:
| > That's funny. Whatever happened to vision and
| innovation? Improving the world and people's lives?
| Achieving great things through technology? Empowering
| people?
|
| Unironically, they've already done that.
|
| Microsoft put a PC on every desk, running Microsoft
| software.
|
| Facebook connected the world to all their friends and
| relatives.
|
| Amazon first revolutionized e-commerce, making it
| possible to buy almost anything from almost anywhere.
| Then they revolutionized server computing, making it
| possible for anyone to spin up a software backend and
| scale it out without buying or leasing your own servers.
|
| Apple got pocket sized general purpose computers into the
| pockets of the majority of people in the world (through
| iPhone and inspiring Android).
|
| Google enabled people to find pretty much any piece of
| human knowledge or information.
|
| The problem is, once those goals were accomplished, there
| was a still a need to keep revenue and profits rising.
| Which always seems to end up with selling ads at some
| point.
| midoridensha wrote:
| >Microsoft put a PC on every desk, running Microsoft
| software.
|
| As someone who was in the industry in the 90s and 00s,
| and saw just how many man-hours were wasted in dealing
| with problems caused by MS's buggy and insecure software,
| I don't really count this as "improving the world and
| people's lives". Even at the time, there were far better
| alternatives available; they just didn't have the same
| marketing or lock-in advantages.
|
| I'll grant you the stuff about FB, Amazon, and Google
| though, and maybe Apple with their iPhone.
|
| >The problem is, once those goals were accomplished,
| there was a still a need to keep revenue and profits
| rising. Which always seems to end up with selling ads at
| some point.
|
| Yep, this is the problem: unsustainability. These
| companies should have been able to shift into a "utility
| provider" type status where they don't really grow much
| (except from expanding population, or new untapped global
| markets), where they can simply provide a fairly constant
| service and have a regular revenue stream.
| zahllos wrote:
| > I don't really count this as "improving the world and
| people's lives".
|
| Microsoft provided the operating system that allowed the
| commoditised IBM PC, and later laptops, to launch.
|
| Without this, no Google, no Amazon and no FB.
|
| Put another way, if every workstation still cost $5k and
| up to own, far fewer people would have bothered in the
| first place.
|
| No complaints about your views on Microsoft software ;)
| I'd argue I'm not sure Google or Amazon are "making the
| world a better place" when you get into the details, but
| this is purely about the wider impacts of their strategy.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| > _That 's funny. Whatever happened to vision and
| innovation? Improving the world and people's lives?
| Achieving great things through technology? Empowering
| people? I guess founders only talk about this stuff in
| the startup stage._
|
| These were lies calculated to help them recruit
| idealistic young people, who lack the experience to
| disregard companies making grandiose claims about
| themselves and their motives.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| The home screen on my Windows 10 copy usually has a nice
| image and a few bits of text about that image or location.
|
| Recently, I got an image of a tropical island. The text was
| all about how Jurassic Park was shot on the same island,
| and how, more importantly, Jurassic World Dominion was also
| shot on the same island, and that Jurassic World Dominion
| had X many dinosaurs.
|
| A very thinly disguised ad for Jurassic World. Right on my
| home screen.
| NayamAmarshe wrote:
| "Mom! There's an OS in my Ad!"
| midoridensha wrote:
| >I can't wait for Windows 13 when Microsoft has sold
| installer ads to the highest bidder and I'm asked if I want
| a case of Mountain Dew during install.
|
| As a Linux user, I look forward to that, so I can laugh
| even more at Windows users and what they're willing to put
| up with. I just wish Apple would follow suit with this kind
| of bad treatment of users.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| The sad part is that even despite the horrific bullshit
| that's become bundled with Windows since 10, Linux
| Desktop market share still hasn't changed.
|
| At the end of the day, what the average person wants is
| an OS that works properly without requiring complex
| configuration, and the people making Linux distributions
| don't understand or respect this.
| mayankkaizen wrote:
| Many many years back, when I knew nothing of programming
| and very little of tech words, I used to wonder why
| people don't use Linux instead of Windows if it is so
| great. Then I realized Linux is good for nerds. For the
| rest of tech ignorant people, it is Windows. As I read
| somewhere long ago, Linux is for people who know what
| they are doing. Windows is for people who don't know what
| they are doing.
| AussieWog93 wrote:
| I'd go one step further than that.
|
| I would consider myself fairly tech-literate. Software
| engineer, use git from the command line, can exit vim.
| Even then I gave up on Linux after using it for a couple
| of years because it's just so darn _stressful_.
|
| When I need to get shit done, the last thing I want to is
| read pages and pages of documentation about someone's pet
| project or some Stack Overflow post containing the random
| incantation I need to fix some hardware incompatibility
| that is fixed out of the box on some distros but not
| others.
|
| The Desktop Linux experience, at least for me, was like
| owning a car with an incredibly detailed repair manual
| and amazing parts availability but broke down every 6
| weeks. Even the best mechanic in the world wouldn't want
| to use that car as a daily driver.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| It's weird. I had that exact experience with Linux. Had
| to reinstall the system from scratch every major
| distribution upgrades because they always screwed
| something up. Fedora's package manager corrupted its own
| database once. Support was just badly answered forum
| posts.
|
| Then I switched to Arch Linux and never had problems ever
| again. Been running it for years with no problems despite
| its inexplicable reputation for instability. Whenever I
| want to do anything, I just look it up in the Arch Wiki
| which is the best Linux documentation ever made.
|
| I have to use Windows at work and it's nothing but
| constant never ending pain. The god damn OS just does all
| sorts of stuff I couldn't care less about that have
| absolutely nothing to do with my job. It actually costs
| me money in lost productivity. All this for what? The
| only thing it does is launch the browser, and very rarely
| Libre Office when the network is down and I have to save
| a document locally. Yes, Libre Office.
| going_ham wrote:
| On the flip side, I had the opposite experience. With
| Linux it was just the matter of compiling from the
| source. And most of the time, it would just compile
| without any issue. With windows, I needed to download
| MSVC and the whole studio and wasn't able to have the app
| running. I really did not understand why it had to be so
| complicated. At least with linux there is a support from
| the community because the same problem might have been
| encountered by someone else.
|
| Further, in Windows, whenever I was trying new things or
| doing out of the normal stuff, it required modifying a
| lot of registry values. I found it horrible compared to
| Linux, where everything is a file and you can immediately
| change the file.
| xdavidliu wrote:
| > OneDrive?
|
| If you pay attention closely, you'll notice that sometime
| in the last year, the Windows 11 installation slide for
| onedrive went from "hey do you want onedrive, yes or no?"
| to "hey here's onedrive, we've enabled it for you" (with no
| option now for opting out of one-drive).
|
| It's still possible to disable one-drive once you boot up
| for the first time, but the steps are kinda hidden and
| convoluted:
|
| 1. open onedrive settings, go to the "backup" tab, then
| "manage backups" and uncheck all the folders
|
| 2. go to another tab to the left (whose name escapes me,
| but was something like "sharing" or "syncing") then go to
| "select which folders are shared" or something like that,
| then uncheck all the folders. You can even uncheck the
| "personal vault" folder if you expand it and uncheck its
| contents (consisting of a single subitem) first.
|
| 3. go to the first tab and unselect "start onedrive at
| startup"
|
| 4. Right click onedrive's menu and click "quit onedrive".
|
| These steps are now necessary, when in the past you were
| able to opt-out of onedrive with one click during
| installation.
| boplicity wrote:
| Unfortunately, it's a very similar situation for MacOS.
| Seemingly endless prompts to sign up for one service or
| another. At least Linux is viable for _some_ of us.
| sithlord wrote:
| is that any different than going to Disney World and having
| coke products shoved in your face?
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Of course. When I go to places like that, it's because I
| _want_ to consume. When I go to a store, when I open the
| store app, it 's because I _want_ to see products. That 's
| the whole point. In those cases, it's not advertising, it's
| information.
|
| The problem with computers today is you get advertised to
| no matter what you do. Can't boot goddamn Windows without
| it finding an excuse to show you stupid Taboola ads. Can't
| open a simple website without being literally flooded with
| ads all around the "content". This "content" is just an
| incidental abstraction, an arbitrary square on the screen
| that ads mold themselves around like parasites. It doesn't
| matter what the "content" is, it could be anything that
| draws in users, the real product is their attention being
| captured by the ads.
| grey_earthling wrote:
| I describe this problem as misaligned purposes.
|
| You want to consume plastic stuff; Disney World wants to
| sell you plastic stuff; a magical time ensues.
|
| But you buy Windows because you want a useful OS; whereas
| Microsoft make Windows as a shop-front for their paid-for
| services; your purpose and the makers' purpose are
| misaligned, and you end up frustrated and annoyed that
| Windows isn't what you want it to be.
|
| Similarly, if a website's purpose is to make money (which
| is fair enough of course), but you're there because you
| want to read interesting stuff, that's a misaligned
| purpose and a frustrating time for you.
|
| Websites that exist primarily to show off interesting
| stuff tend not to tax the content-blocker so hard,
| because the author and audience's purposes are well-
| aligned. And community-governed OSes/distros tend not to
| push other services, because the purpose for making them
| genuinely is to be a useful OS (for their intended
| niche).
|
| My suggestion for what it's worth: choose tools and
| services where the maker's purpose for making it aligns
| with your purpose for using it.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > choose tools and services where the maker's purpose for
| making it aligns with your purpose for using it
|
| What if they don't exist anymore? Because not taking
| advantage of your users by advertising to them means
| leaving money on the table. Eventually some executive is
| gonna show up, notice that and demand that it be done
| because his compensation is directly tied to revenue
| growth or something.
| grey_earthling wrote:
| Yep. I'm saying: avoid things that exist primarily to
| make loads of money.
|
| Smaller, looser, less-commercial organisations have fewer
| or no executives, less concern with making as much money
| as possible, and (in my opinion) tend to produce less
| bullshit.
|
| This is distinct from producing good-quality work --
| their output may be unpolished, but it'll generally be
| sincere, and free of over-commercialised tat.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| Which ISP, phone company, or electrical utility company
| works like that? They don't, because we have (hopefully)
| regulated them. There is a point in which a product stops
| becoming a choice and starts becoming necessary to
| function. You could argue that operating systems are one
| of those things. Lets put some ideas together for
| regulation in these spheres.
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| Yes, because it's trivially easy to avoid going to Disney.
| To avoid all tech giants, you practically need to opt-out
| of modern society and become a hermit.
| howaboutnope wrote:
| An OS is not a destination, it's a medium if you will. A
| better comparison would be being blasted with ads _no
| matter_ where you go.
| javajosh wrote:
| It's healthier to think of business models more like
| organisms. Animals aren't "good" or "bad" for having a
| lifecycle that involves parasitism or predation, stealth or
| deceit, or any number of behaviors, like cannibalism. Life
| doesn't care how you live, just that you live.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Businesses live because society _allows_ them to live. How
| about we make humane business models a pre-condition for
| existence?
|
| "It exists in nature" is not a solid argument for anything.
| I've read about insects that coerce their mates into
| copulation under threat of predation. Yet nobody seriously
| argues that humans should be allowed to rape because rape
| exists in nature. Such an obviously sociopathic argument
| just doesn't fly.
| midoridensha wrote:
| >"It exists in nature" is not a solid argument for
| anything. I've read about insects that coerce their mates
| into copulation under threat of predation. Yet nobody
| seriously argues that humans should be allowed to rape
| because rape exists in nature. Such an obviously
| sociopathic argument just doesn't fly.
|
| It's worse than that. Some insects (I think it's
| mantises) will murder each other after copulation. I'm
| not sure what the evolutionary advantage there is, but
| this doesn't seem like something humans should emulate.
|
| >How about we make humane business models a pre-condition
| for existence?
|
| No, because too many people don't want this.
| javajosh wrote:
| I argue only that organisms evolve to occupy whatever
| space is available to them. This true of organisms, it is
| true of businesses. Both respond to incentives.
| humanizersequel wrote:
| > Businesses live because society _allows_ them to live.
|
| It is not a one way street from "mores of society" ->
| "business practices". Large corporations frequently go to
| extreme lengths attempting to manipulate what society
| does and does not allow.
| howaboutnope wrote:
| I am not "life". Considering something humans do as "bad"
| is kinda like the cultural equivalent of an immune system.
| I don't judge a parasite for trying it on with me, because
| there is no utility in it. Use those resources for fighting
| back harder instead.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Apple advertises their cloud services in macosx constantly and
| there's no way to permanently dismiss these advertisements,
| other than buying said services.
| berkut wrote:
| Turning off the Apple Music / iCloud / Apple Arcade
| notification badge "adverts" in iOS (just got a new iPhone)
| is also - while not _that_ difficult technically - mildly
| annoying...
| BbzzbB wrote:
| >On a long enough timeframe, everyone sells ads.
|
| https://twitter.com/modestproposal1/status/10026493600422830...
| bee_rider wrote:
| Huh, for some reason I'd gotten it into my head that Windows
| was free to OEMs. But it turns out that that was just a
| particular version of 8, "with Bing," a while ago. Wild that
| Windows is a paid product.
| ur-whale wrote:
| >Is it just me, or do major tech companies turn into
| advertising businesses
|
| The fact that matchmakers always make way more money than the
| makers is not a new phenomenon.
|
| As a matter of fact, I'd wager that it's been this way since
| the day man invented barter.
| [deleted]
| londons_explore wrote:
| All of retail is in a way a matchmaker.
|
| Cosco doesn't _make_ the goods they sell - they are just
| being an intermediary between you and the the manufacturer.
| An intermediary that takes a 60+% fee for their work.
| ur-whale wrote:
| > All of retail is in a way a matchmaker.
|
| Disagree.
|
| A retailer does add tangible value beyond matchmaking.
|
| For example, to name a few: - transport
| - quality control - inventory management -
| fine-grained understanding of local demand and providing
| the corresponding supply.
|
| Advertising is _pure_ matchmaking.
| hsnewman wrote:
| Costco has a variety of products the make, chicken, pizza
| etc.
| hk__2 wrote:
| > Cosco doesn't make the goods they sell - they are just
| being an intermediary between you and the the manufacturer.
| An intermediary that takes a 60+% fee for their work.
|
| It can take such "fee" because it's so enormous that it can
| negociate prices in a way _you_ couldn't, as well as
| handling the logistics and having lots of different
| products at the same place. It's not "just an
| intermediary", it's an intermediary that adds value.
|
| If you want to eat a yogurt, would you prefer paying $4 a
| pack of four at Costco or $1500 for 4000 yogurts you have
| to transport from the manufacturer to your home with your
| own truck?
| otikik wrote:
| Those are not the only two options available. A locally
| produced yogurt would cost more than in Costco, but not
| that much more. Maybe $20 a pack, with a deposit for the
| glass, and you would get it at your door with your milk.
| hk__2 wrote:
| I don't think this invalidates the point that Costco is
| _not_ "just an intermediary".
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Would it? You are welcome to start the business and try
| to compete with Costco/Chobani/Dannon/etc
| meowkit wrote:
| > It can take such "fee" because it's so enormous that it
| can negociate prices in a way you couldn't
|
| So what's the solution to this problem? In one way I
| think this could be framed as rent seeking via economies
| of scale.
| hk__2 wrote:
| > So what's the solution to this problem?
|
| There's no problem; Costco is an intermediary that brings
| value and so it takes its cut. Why do people buy from
| Amazon, who is also "just" an intermediary? Because you
| can buy millions of different products from one single
| place instead of having to go see each manufacturer where
| you wouldn't be able to buy individual items anyway.
|
| This situation is a lot more effective than forcing each
| manufacturer to develop its own customer-facing business
| with all the costs and logistics that go with it.
| int_19h wrote:
| The logistics part is value that Costco added by itself.
| They're entitled to fair compensation for that part.
|
| But the "so big it can strongarm suppliers into pricing"
| is not value added - it's value _taken_ from someone
| else.
| hk__2 wrote:
| > But the "so big it can strongarm suppliers into
| pricing" is not value added - it's value taken from
| someone else.
|
| It's _money_ taken, not value. And giving you the
| customer the ability to buy something cheaper _is_ value
| (for you, at least).
| siliconc0w wrote:
| If you search for socks and someone shows you a promoted ad for
| socks, you are likely trading relevance for money as the best
| sock for that person is unlikely to be the most promoted one.
| This works in the short term but ultimately what should happen
| (and currently doesn't) is users then use a search or retail
| platform that gives them more relevant results.
|
| Second is using my search for socks elsewhere on the platform.
| This is essentially using user-data outside of the intent it was
| given and that should be controllable by the user and default to
| the most conservative option without annoying dialogue boxes or
| other harassment. Whether it's within the platform or not
| shouldn't make a difference.
|
| So competition is good, but unfortunately what I'm taking away
| from this that companies are going to bake more ads into their
| products because the products themselves aren't seeing much
| competitive pressure (except maybe for Meta and rightfully so).
| cetahfh14615 wrote:
| > as the best sock for that person is unlikely to be the most
| promoted one.
|
| not necessarily. I don't see how there could be a correlation
| between the two. When you see "sponsored" on a listing, that
| doesn't tell you how much the vendor paid. Also many large and
| reputable vendors will pay simply to guarantee they are at the
| top of the listing. For the vendors that don't sponsor, you
| don't know whether the amount they save goes into a higher
| quality product
|
| > This is essentially using user-data outside of the intent it
| was given and that should be controllable by the user and
| default to the most conservative option without annoying
| dialogue boxes or other harassment.
|
| Except feeding user data back into the system makes certain
| things technically possible that weren't possible before. Do
| you think modern map applications would have the same degree of
| accuracy if they weren't able to use user data to improve it?
|
| > Whether it's within the platform or not shouldn't make a
| difference.
|
| It does make a difference because keeping it within the
| platform could be used to improve the platform itself. Sending
| it outside the platform could be used for more malicious
| purposes. In the map application example, the user knows their
| data feeds into improved accuracy. But they don't know where
| that data goes outside the platform
| Closi wrote:
| > For the vendors that don't sponsor, you don't know whether
| the amount they save goes into a higher quality product.
|
| For the vendors that don't sponsor, you don't know whether
| the amount they save goes into a higher quality product.
| Maybe it did, maybe it didn't.
|
| But for the vendors that DO sponsor, you _definetly_ know
| that the money didn 't go into a higher quality product.
|
| Some eCommerce companies who are agressively using
| Google/FB/Social will spend 30%+ of their revenue just on
| online/influencer advertising (based on companies I have
| worked with).
| otabdeveloper4 wrote:
| Spending more on marketing allows them to increase renevue
| and lower their per-unit margins, leading to more
| investment into research and development.
|
| Theoretically, at least.
| pdevr wrote:
| Misleading title. The heading implies both Google and Meta are
| threatened, but the article discusses the emerging competition to
| Meta, like Snapchat, Tiktok, and Apple. There is no mention of a
| search competitor to Google. There is no mention of any concrete
| threat to Google from the competition, either, other than
| implying they will also be affected by the general trend.
|
| Google may very well face competition from device manufacturers
| and the like, but this article does not provide any details about
| it whatsoever.
| zwkrt wrote:
| Google isn't being threatened by a search competitor they're
| being threatened by attention competitors. The fact that Google
| provides search results is very much secondary to the fact that
| they deliver advertisements to eyeballs.
| [deleted]
| DethNinja wrote:
| One problem is that bot amount on the internet is now far larger
| than the golden days of internet advertising.
|
| Real-Life ads became competitive with internet advertising. In
| fact, they might be better for a large number companies.
|
| Unless they can manage to guarantee that ads are being seen by
| real humans, I think their revenue will keep dropping.
| frozenport wrote:
| Many people were paying for SEO, which you can still buy today
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Everyone here likely works for a company that advertises.
|
| It might be in our individual best interest to have super
| effective advertising (for increased revenue), but it might be in
| the world's interest to not allow that, because effective
| advertising leads to consumption... (and for privacy
| reasons,etc.)
| incompatible wrote:
| "Everyone" is usually going to be a stretch. I know it's not
| true, in this case.
| retskrad wrote:
| Is there a way to bypass the firewall and view the article?
| jeffbee wrote:
| The Economist is available at every magazine stand and most
| public libraries in America.
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/bypass-paywal...
| laserlight wrote:
| Yes, see this comment for instance [0].
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=32890467
| [deleted]
| imiric wrote:
| The entire advertising industry should burn down, as far as I'm
| concerned.
|
| Advertising ruins every form of media it touches. From radio,
| television, newspapers (it's arguably responsible for killing
| journalism), and now the internet, and all the services we use it
| for.
|
| Web search is useless because of it. Most websites are pretty
| much spyware. A large percentage of them are SEO spam, existing
| only to serve ads. Most content on YouTube, the largest video
| platform, is unwatchable due to constant ad breaks and sponsored
| content. Astroturfing is everywhere, promoted posts flood social
| media sites. Advertising is instrumental to spreading of
| disinformation, propaganda, toppling of democracies and companies
| like Cambridge Analytica. And if all that wasn't enough, _paid_
| subscription services have started serving ads. It's the same
| business model from TV, but even more intrusive and lucrative
| since user tracking and microtargetting is now possible.
|
| Stop. Just stop. Users want none of this. Of course, everyone
| loves getting services for free, but what adtech companies are
| getting in exchange for user data now is worth much more than the
| "free" services they offer. *They should be paying us instead.*
|
| We need new business models that are as easy for content
| providers to implement, yet don't come at the expense of user
| experience, and don't cause services to deteriorate into a
| privacy nightmare. This should be easier nowadays with
| cryptocurrencies. I still think the Basic Attention Token[1] is a
| step in the right direction. Are there more examples of this?
|
| [1]: https://basicattentiontoken.org/
| czhu12 wrote:
| Isn't basic attention token based entirely on advertising?
| imiric wrote:
| I'm not a Brave user, but from what I've read, users can
| choose to see ads and earn BAT, _or_ they can fund their BAT
| wallet and opt out of ads altogether. And the ads don 't seem
| to track the user or infringe on their privacy, so it's a
| substantial improvement over most adtech ads.
| riku_iki wrote:
| > The entire advertising industry should burn down, as far as
| I'm concerned.
|
| but they perform important economy function: connect buyers and
| sellers..
| LawTalkingGuy wrote:
| It feels like it's a race to the bottom where if it didn't
| exist everyone would be better off, but once it does exist
| everyone has to compete.
|
| Without ads we wouldn't pick products blindly we'd simply
| have more product-comparison sites.
| riku_iki wrote:
| > Without ads we wouldn't pick products blindly we'd simply
| have more product-comparison sites.
|
| and you would need ad to promote your product comparison
| site. And then we will go full circle with leading sites
| abusing their power, and manipulating search results.
| imiric wrote:
| > but they perform important economy function: connect buyers
| and sellers..
|
| Do they? I've never once clicked on an ad and made a
| purchase, and I'm a fairly regular consumer. If I have a need
| for a product, I'll search for it.
|
| All advertising does is create a false desire to own a
| product by psychologically manipulating the viewer. It is
| dishonest by definition.
|
| In order to make a purchase, I first have to have a need for
| a product. This should arise naturally, not via some
| artifically produced desire. Then I'd like to read the true
| specifications of all suitable products that I can find, and
| read hopefully real and honest reviews by people who've
| purchased them. After that, I will narrow down my search and
| will only make a purchase if I think a specific product will
| fulfill my needs.
|
| Advertising directly interferes with this concept, steps in
| as a middle man between buyer and seller, and introduces all
| kinds of psychological tricks to manipulate me to not even
| make the purchase--I just need to click on an ad, and I make
| the advertiser money. It is unnecessary at best, and outright
| harmful at worst.
| riku_iki wrote:
| > I've never once clicked on an ad and made a purchase, and
| I'm a fairly regular consumer.
|
| Companies track conversion rates from Ads, and since they
| still put money, it means Ads work for many cases.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| I think there is a very simple solution. It requires no
| technology, but it does require changing the culture of
| billions of people. And that solution is to make search a paid-
| for utility. People pay for their ISP, Electricity and Phone,
| but expect search for free. The problem is this would be less
| profitable for Google. Because advertising me a $10,000
| computer at $10/1000 impressions that I will buy "for my
| company" is more profitable than me paying $10 a month for
| search. Therefore the solution might be to make Google a public
| service, perhaps owned my multiple governments around the
| world. Call me a dreamer! Downside to that might be tighter
| surveillance though :-(
|
| I don't see blockchain as a knight in shining armour here.
| Search is one of those hard things. Like sending a man to the
| moon. No one can compete overnight. Maybe the hope is AI could
| create a scenario where a search engine running locally is
| realistic (like all the prompt-based image generation stuff
| that has come out, can be run locally now).
| Tomte wrote:
| > And that solution is to make search a paid-for utility.
|
| There's nothing making the search engine refrain from
| additional ads.
|
| Remember magazines? They were paid. And still had lots of
| ads.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Yeah, anything paid can have ads. Cable TV springs to mind.
| Magazines. Even streaming services are thinking about it.
|
| If search becomes a utility, like water or natural gas,
| presumably there would be some limit to the advertising. I
| think the original Google results with ads on the right
| format is a good compromise. Because 2% of the time an ad
| is what you actually want, and those options are then
| presented still.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Funnily enough, only Google is currently offering paid
| subscriptions that delete ads. All of their competitors are
| all-in on advertising. Google, by contrast, has that attention-
| respecting and affordable YouTube program that makes YouTube
| completely ad-free.
| nemothekid wrote:
| > _Of course, everyone loves getting services for free, but
| what adtech companies are getting in exchange for user data now
| is worth much more than the "free" services they offer. They
| should be paying us instead._
|
| This solution is backwards; people should not only create
| content for you, but they should pay you for the privilege of
| having you enjoy it?
|
| It wasn't ads that killed journalism; it was the proliferation
| of free content that killed the funding for any kind of
| meaningful journalism. BAT isn't the right direction; they just
| tack on a crypto grift to make other people rich. I'd argue
| services like Netflix and Disney+ are the type of business
| models that work without ads, its just that people dont want to
| pay for content.
| scarface74 wrote:
| > Netflix and Disney+ are the type of business models that
| work without ads, its just that people dont want to pay for
| content
|
| You don't see an issue with that statement?
| imiric wrote:
| > people should not only create content for you, but they
| should pay you for the privilege of having you enjoy it?
|
| I was specifically referring to "free" services from the
| likes of Google and Meta. The value they extract from user
| data is worth much more than the value users are getting from
| their services. Tech companies paying users isn't a novel
| idea[1].
|
| For content providers I'm arguing that there should be new
| business models they can rely on that doesn't detract from
| the user experience. Patreon is also a good alternative.
|
| > BAT isn't the right direction; they just tack on a crypto
| grift to make other people rich.
|
| That's the cynical take, and, sure, I don't trust Brave Inc.
| either. That said, funding a crypto wallet from which I can
| selectively pay for the content I consume is a sound model,
| even if this specific implementation isn't ideal.
|
| > I'd argue services like Netflix and Disney+ are the type of
| business models that work without ads, its just that people
| dont want to pay for content.
|
| People are definitely paying for it. For a short while there
| a few years back, there was probably a reduction in pirated
| content. But large studios got greedy, enforced region
| locking even more, the market split up into dozens of similar
| services, and now consumers are expected to subscribe to many
| different streaming services to access content, which is
| exactly what we were trying to escape from TV by cord
| cutting.
|
| [1]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2020/10/3
| 0/sh...
| UltraViolence wrote:
| There are always threats, but these companies being paranoid, are
| always on the lookout for competitors. Facebook in the past had
| success defusing the threat by simply copying the competitor's
| app verbatim (Snapchat) and is trying to repeat this by altering
| both Facebook and Instagram to work like TikTok.
|
| The reason I see TikTok as a threat is largely because the
| company ignores all the rules and regulations that protect the
| privacy of minors and adults alike and companies will want that
| data regardless. Facebook won't be able to supply it to them
| since it has to abide by our laws.
|
| OTOH TikTok being based in a nations that's a strategic
| competitor to the U.S. may well mean the company is simply
| banned. IMHO it would be more fortuitous for Meta and Google to
| lobby for a ban. Fighting TikTok will not work.
| karmasimida wrote:
| Good thing isn't?
|
| They have been sleeping while making money. Now it's time to
| wake-up and do some serious innovation or become irrelevant
| dgudkov wrote:
| We know already how they will optimize to compete - more
| surveillance, more algorithms, and more annoyance.
| hey2022 wrote:
| A somewhat tangential question. Why is Alphabet not decoupling
| Google from Google Ads / Google AdSense? Having Google's name
| constantly in the news cycle because of their ad practices has
| ruined their reputation (deservingly). Wouldn't a separate legal
| entity also be a safer approach from the legal perspective in the
| light of the ongoing antitrust investigations?
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Because Google would then become a business with virtually no
| revenue - and no chance of producing revenue. Even though
| Alphabet itself would remain just as profitable, a business
| organization can't survive long if its goals are not in some
| ways associated with producing revenue, by the nature of how
| corporate politics work.
| asdff wrote:
| Maybe if google wasn't so beholden on the ad revenue, they
| could pursue more interesting opportunities for revenue.
| Imagine a first rate aws competiter that wasn't Azure and the
| headache that system is in comparison. that alone would
| generate conversions overnight. Then you can use some of that
| infrastructure you've just built and your customers are
| paying for to run your own science division that could
| research anything and everything with free compute.
| int_19h wrote:
| But they don't care about opportunities; they care about
| revenue, and they already have plenty of that,
| _guaranteed_.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| There is no such thing as guaranteed or overnight
| conversions to a new cloud, at least not from the relevant
| segment of the market (enterprise). They would have to
| invest massively in B2B sales and actual human support
| (which they have an institutional aversion to) to make any
| more of a dent in this market then they already have.
| closedloop129 wrote:
| >Because Google would then become a business with virtually
| no revenue - and no chance of producing revenue.
|
| kagi.com bets on becoming a business with revenue. In the
| same way, Google could start asking money for searches
| without ads.
|
| In the long run, Google should make more money because a
| society that runs on the best available information will be
| more valuable. The information market will be bigger and thus
| Google's income should be bigger.
|
| The problem is that it's too easy to pitch advertisers
| against each other and force them to pay a huge fraction of
| their profits. On the other hand, profit margins in a
| transparent market are small.
|
| Google could become something like Bloomberg and sell their
| good information to companies for high margins.
| throwaway892238 wrote:
| The only thing I will miss when Google eventually dies is Google
| Maps. Can somebody make a paid version of it please?
| rieTohgh6 wrote:
| Google Maps reduced free tiers and raised prices for access to
| its APIs few years ago - so maybe it is profitable on its own,
| at least core parts. Some people moved to use OSM but its
| quality varies between areas. There probably is no way to make
| StreetView profitable
| asdff wrote:
| >There probably is no way to make StreetView profitable
|
| Replace the operator and the subaru with a drone then the
| prospects change. With a single drone flying a programmed
| route at 20mph during daylight you'd have mapped the ~22000
| miles of maintained roads in Los Angeles in under 100 days.
| Maybe you could contract with city vehicles who would like to
| have street view maps of their cities, and just stick the
| cameras on garbage trucks and the like and have the bulk of
| the area mapped before long over the course of their regular
| job duties coming into different areas.
| endisneigh wrote:
| monopoly aside the bigger threat is prolonged stagflation in the
| economy which will result in dramatic consumer pullback which
| will kill the RoI of advertising. of course, this will hurt far
| more than Google and Meta
| torginus wrote:
| Somebody always brings this point up so it might as well be me
| this time - but does advertising work at all, particularly online
| advertising?
|
| I refuse to believe I'm some kind of one of a kind special
| snowflake, but whenever I wanna buy something cheap or
| disposable, like food, socks etc. I just see it and buy it.
|
| On the other hand when I'm looking for something I'm planning to
| get a bit more mileage out of, like a laptop, a pair of
| headphones or a cordless drill, I usually read the reviews and
| buy the product I think is most appropriate for me, not what the
| ads show.
| damontal wrote:
| Saw an ad for True Classic shirts on FB and ordered some and
| really like them.
|
| Same for my solo stove.
|
| My first thought when asked if online ads work is "No. Of
| course not. I just ignore them." But then I remembered these
| purchases.
| sidvit wrote:
| A lot of the reviews are subject to the same advertising
| practices. Astroturfing on Reddit in particular has become
| especially egregious
| philjohn wrote:
| You may not be a special snowflake, but you're not exactly
| common either I'd wager.
|
| During lockdown I found several fantastic butchers who decided
| to launch a delivery service to reach more people through ads
| on Facebook. I'm still a regular customer.
|
| For things that are available in a supermarket, brand
| advertising is better, for smaller businesses operating online,
| ads do indeed work.
| firecall wrote:
| All Advertising works. It's just a question of ROI!
|
| Of course you have to qualify Advertising as being a persuasive
| Ad' shown to an audience that may purchase your product at some
| point!
|
| What constitutes an Ad' is also open to some debate, but you
| get the general idea!
| delecti wrote:
| Having worked in ads, yes. People click through and purchase,
| and in numbers sufficient to make the whole ordeal make sense.
| Granted I worked in ads at Amazon, on their platforms (Kindle
| and retail), and for items sold on Amazon, so they were winning
| no matter what happened. The sellers were doing good too
| though, with many repeat customers, and not enough inventory to
| satisfy them all.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I thought I was basically immune to ads. Well, other than the
| "customers were also interested in" ones on Amazon that come up
| specifically when I'm already looking for a particular type of
| product. That of course has the opportunity to be exceptionally
| well targeted.
|
| But I did notice a couple I'd fallen for. I happened to see
| Harry's Razors and Tommy John underwear in a store. They are
| heavily advertised on podcasts -- go to the online shop, the
| host will say, put in the code, get it shipped blah blah, your
| face and/or balls will feel nice. Somehow as a result they'd
| gotten into a mental niche in my brain as "things that would
| otherwise require jumping through annoying hoops to get," so
| when I saw them in a store, I ended up grabbing them. Because
| getting them otherwise would have been annoying. Yes in
| retrospect I recognize how silly this thought process was.
|
| The razors I've been using for a while. They are basically fine
| I think -- which is to say, you only really notice is a razor
| is really shitty, and they aren't, so I'll call that a win.
| Just got the underwear recently, no notes yet.
| torginus wrote:
| That's a fair point - but please note that the ads that have
| influenced your behavior have nothing to do with online
| advertising.
|
| I'd assume you bought those things because you lend a higher
| degree of credibility to the podcasters' recommendations than
| TV ads or side banners.
|
| These ads have nothing to do with the high tech $300B AI and
| data driven ad industry mentioned in the post, there were
| sponsored segments on radio talk shows more than half a
| century ago.
| cryptoegorophy wrote:
| It works. It works a lot better than you think. My biggest
| mistake was relying on organic traffic. Once I switched to paid
| ads business went 10x. Don't assume everyone is like you, you
| are the 1% of the 1% of the 1%. Majority people follow ads
| that's why it still exists.
| amelius wrote:
| Ok, but it works for the wrong reasons.
|
| I.e., people buy stuff they wouldn't buy if they got honest
| information.
|
| It works against the main argument in favor of the free
| market: not the best product wins, but the one with the
| biggest advertising budget.
| ripper1138 wrote:
| There are plenty of great products that have to advertise
| because advertising introduces consumers to new products
| they didn't know existed.
| najsudhsis wrote:
| Yes.
| delecti wrote:
| The free market has always been a fantasy. There has never
| been perfect information, and there never will be.
| Fernicia wrote:
| Many people still seem to have a very narrow, Mad Men-esque
| view of advertising.
| bolt7469 wrote:
| Tracking users with online advertising is actually a good
| thing for economic efficiency. People tend to see more
| relevant products, and are able to allocate their resources
| to products that better meet their needs. The best ads
| aren't lying to people.
| asdff wrote:
| Only if your measure of efficiency is more things bought
| and sold. An efficient economy would do the same work
| with the fewest goods moved the shortest distance
| possible. What we have is the opposite of that. You go to
| the store today and there's a plastic can opener that
| will break in 2 years and came from parts sourced half a
| world away instead of the metal one your grandfather has
| been using for the past 75 years and was stamped in a
| building downtown using steel also smelted downtown with
| ore from within the region.
| amelius wrote:
| How is that true if the "best" ads are still paid for by
| companies who might not sell the best stuff?
|
| Ads just try to drive up sales. This is something we
| don't need given current energy/climate issues.
|
| There are better ways of bringing supply and demand
| together. Several decades ago we had yellow pages, and
| they worked fine. I'm sure in the internet age we can
| come up with an even better system that doesn't involve
| user tracking and/or distracting ads.
| ripper1138 wrote:
| Several decades ago we had TV as well. Im not sure yellow
| pages are better than internet ads.
| therealdrag0 wrote:
| Many people don't care about optimizing for buying the
| best of its kind, they are just interested in something
| interesting/useful. Ads relevant to interests is more
| efficient than ads not relevant to interests.
| granshaw wrote:
| Mind elaborating what's your general business and which ad
| platforms worked for you?
|
| I have a broad-market/horizontal smb Saas and tried google
| ads to not much success. Was getting charged ~$3/click for
| quite irrelevant searches even after lots of negative
| filtering. Suppose I could've tried some more...
| bolt7469 wrote:
| _particularly online advertising_
|
| Online advertising is far, far better than other forms.
| Marketers can tie individual sales to specific ads and improve
| ads by making them more like successful ones. This kind of
| specificity isn't possible with TV or print ads.
|
| _what the ads show_
|
| A good chunk of advertising is "brand awareness" not
| necessarily just selling one product. The point of brand
| awareness is to associate your brand with its brand values in a
| person's mind.
| SheddingPattern wrote:
| When you research a new product, on what platform is it the
| review hosted and do the reviewers make a living out of
| reviews? I believe that that the line between advertising and
| reviews are increasingly blurred
| aglavine wrote:
| I sometimes want it to work more on me.
|
| There was a promotion like 25% off on Thermomix. For a week
| only. I wanted one, but I naturally distrust campaigns that
| urges yoi to buy in a short time.
|
| Now it is like 25% more expensive.
| atom058 wrote:
| 33% more expensive
|
| I was compelled to note this. I'm Sorry.
| QuantumGood wrote:
| Some products or services primarily exist through ads. We ran
| local events, and eventually advertised them. Once we ran ads,
| we had to upgrade our conference hotel reservations on average
| from 3 rooms to 12 or so.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| "advertising" is not just the obvious obnoxious youtube preroll
| ads and flashy popups. Sponsored products, in content product
| placement, adjusted and paid ranking, it takes so many more
| forms.
|
| Also a lot of people won't be able to make the distinction
| between an ad entry and an organic entry in a listing. I've
| mistakenly hit ads, and might be hitting some here and there
| without realizing it, and I would bet you do too.
|
| That's part of why legit businesses have to buy ads for their
| own product to avoid having a competitors eating up their
| result page and getting all the misplaced hits.
| huitzitziltzin wrote:
| This is a great question and one which is quite difficult to
| answer.
|
| One place to start on the difficulties is an excellent paper by
| Lewis and Rao from the Quarterly Journal of Economics in 2015.
| The original title was something like: "on the impossibility of
| measuring the returns to advertising." Just getting enough data
| to reject the hypothesis "this ad campaign did nothing" is
| extremely challenging. Lewis is a great producer of research on
| this topic and has written papers based on his experience at
| Yahoo.
|
| Another great paper is by Blake, Nosko and Tadelis from
| Econometrica in... 2014? They turned off _all_ of eBay's
| keyword search ads in some markets as an experiment. They found
| that they maintained about 95%+ of their business while saving
| $50 eBay million dollars or so.
|
| Beware confident assertions from people in the ad industry that
| ads clearly work. It is not so obvious that they do. This isn't
| to say they don't work! But it's a challenging scientific
| question.
| najsudhsis wrote:
| its a simple question answered by sociologists not
| economists.
|
| advertising creates a barrier to enter a market, not the
| market.
|
| when you spend on ads, you are not creating new market for
| you, you are just unlocking some of the reserve market the
| established leaders secure via misinformation and brand
| brainwashing.
| huitzitziltzin wrote:
| We have been considering that possibility in the literature
| on the economics of advertising since the 1950's or 1960's,
| if not earlier. If you want a survey of this and other
| early ideas in the literature, see Kyle Bagwell's
| contribution to the handbook of industrial organization,
| vol 3 (2007 or so).
| echelon wrote:
| I know this is a terrible imposition, but would you mind
| summarizing the conclusions of this comment and your
| previous comment with regard to the measurements done in
| literature?
|
| This is hard to follow for those of us not in academia
| with access to journals. Or time to figure out how to
| hunt these sources down.
|
| I feel like your comments contain pointers to deep
| quantitative insights.
| CryptoBanker wrote:
| That experiment simply means _their_ ads don't work
| asdff wrote:
| How do you know your ad even worked and you didn't just
| correlate performance of your ad campaign with some
| confounding factor(s) you will never be able to account
| for? you aren't testing for a mechanism here, just whether
| certain other metrics changed favorably over the campaign
| period and you make assumptions about the cause. you have
| no idea if the ad converted or not. how may times are you
| repeating your ab testing and with what sample size? are
| you running simulations too so you understand what a
| successful campaign would even look like based on your
| sample size? are you underpowered or underdetermined?
| probably only the most careful advertisers are thinking
| about these things, and I really wonder how significant the
| results look after doing these sorts of things.
| huitzitziltzin wrote:
| Very true. That's part of my point. It's a hard question!
| It is not correct to assume that advertising works. We
| don't know.
| grok22 wrote:
| When you "see it" and if you not going just by cheapest price,
| one of the things you might go by is "familiarity" (for
| products in the same space that are similarly priced). That
| "familiarity" which introduces a sense of "maybe it's good"
| because you've seen it mentioned many times is sometimes
| introduced by the advertising of the product you constantly see
| as you go around the Internet. All that happens prior to you
| actually buying the product.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| This is true of regular advertising too: many people think
| they're immune to it. Corporations wouldn't spend billions if
| it wasn't effective.
|
| That being said, I tend to agree with you in the sense that I
| _never_ buy the obscure products that are recommended to me on
| FB /Google.
|
| On the other hand, I think paying YouTubers to promote products
| is super effective. People are extremely receptive to
| influencers recommending products, esp. when it doesn't seem
| like advertising.
| pydry wrote:
| If 60% were immune corporations would still spend billions on
| it.
|
| I suspect a lot of people are immune but also a lot of people
| are very susceptible.
| n8ta wrote:
| Corporations don't make mistakes. Corporations run ads. =>
| Ads are not mistakes.
|
| Not sure I buy the first premise of this argument.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| Corporations do make mistake, but probably not consistently
| spending billions of dollars for no gain. For instance,
| Coca Cola spends 4 billions per year [1]
|
| [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/286526/coca-cola-
| adverti...
| solarmist wrote:
| Corporations wouldn't spend billions on
| advertising/marketing for no returns. The problem is we
| have no idea what works. Every single experiment says it
| does _something_ and that's as far as we've gotten.
| naet wrote:
| The hacker news audience is definitely in a minority
| demographic of highly tech literate people. You may not always
| realize it, but just by being in this community and
| participating in our discussions you are miles ahead of many
| other people.
|
| While we may identify and scroll past all sponsored google
| results (or even use adblockers or custom host files to block
| certain actors, etc) most other people are not at the same
| level of computer sophistication and won't necessarily do the
| same. Ads get clicked a lot.
| [deleted]
| dustinmoris wrote:
| throwaway2214 wrote:
| most of people on hackernews experience very different internet
| than the rest of the world, due to adblocks, pi holes, netflix,
| paid youtube, etc...
|
| most web pages are up to 60% ads, search results are almost all
| ads, tv is mostly ads
|
| google with their "answering question" thing has thought people
| to just trust it and click on first results, most of which are
| ads
|
| ads, cookie banners and privacy popups cover easily most of the
| page, especially on mobile.
| kumarvvr wrote:
| It works sometimes. Just like any other form of advertising.
|
| As an avid internet user, my mind is automatically turned off
| to ads on any content I see.
|
| I also blindly ignore the YT ads and focus only on the skip ad
| button. Strangely, I also ignore the audio, it just doesn't
| register.
|
| However, If I am researching to buy a product or service, I
| keep getting shown ads about it _everywhere_ I go to, so I do
| click on some ads.
| siquick wrote:
| I worked at one of the worlds biggest travel search companies.
| The guy who was in charge of PPC for our region reckoned that
| if they turned off Google search ads then the company would
| lose 70% of revenue. It's probably even worse now that Google
| has taken over the SERPs for anything travel related.
| sircastor wrote:
| What I find most amusing is the amazon and brand ads I see on
| Facebook.
|
| Amazon is trying to sell me dental office equipment, or
| specialized restaurant tools, and a dozen other things that few
| outside of a particular area of expertise would remotely
| consider. It's bizarre.
| typon wrote:
| What I've personally noticed is that for people like us
| ("special snowflakes"), the ads still work but at a
| subconscious level. When you are evaluating products in your
| "research" phase, you aren't doing a completely unbiased
| analysis. You have picked up brand names and products in the
| background as you browse the internet and when it comes to
| making that 50/50 call in the end, you will likely go with
| brands that you subconsciously trust. There's another way where
| ads work which I call "incessant bombarding". I would not have
| heard of Vrbo if they didn't have a massive campaign on Youtube
| where almost every video I watched for 3-4 months in 2022 had a
| Vrbo ad on it.
| ijidak wrote:
| I've spent thousands on ads and have overall made 5-13x in ROI.
|
| I can say that my bad ads get less sales than my good ads.
|
| My good ads consistently work, my bad ads don't.
|
| So, ad copy matters.
|
| However, a good advertiser accepts that not everyone is a good
| ad target.
|
| You may not be a good target for advertising.
|
| I would say, I'm not a good target.
|
| Some people are very moved by advertising.
|
| Others are not.
|
| The 80/20 rule applies here.
|
| 80% of the profit in advertising probably comes from 20% of the
| target population for a given product.
|
| I've learned that it's better to think of good advertising as
| just a form of communication.
|
| A great ad is factual information that answers questions
| customers have, and provides urgency.
|
| An ad might contain some fluff, but to really sell it usually
| needs to state explicit, accurate facts, in easy to understand
| language.
|
| There is a lot of bad marketing from people that think they can
| make an ad just because they're a hip or a cool person, or they
| have an eye for color.
|
| Those ads can be egregiously bad.
|
| Just as some marketing sites are all fluff no substance, but
| sold to unsuspecting business owners, the same happens with
| advertising.
|
| But the key idea is that, for certain products, good ads sell
| "enough" to the target audience to be very lucrative.
|
| A great book on this topic is "Ogilvy on Advertising."
| Specifically, the first chapter.
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| Not only it works in general, it probably works on you more
| than you think it does.
| franczesko wrote:
| It's not a duopoly - it's a cartel:
|
| "a combination of independent commercial or industrial
| enterprises designed to limit competition or fix prices"
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| The advertising duopoly is a crown with no kingdom in 2022.
| Online advertising is dead - most people online aren't worth
| advertising too. This isn't 2010 when most people online were
| from wealthy countries. Google and Facebook are having a harder
| and harder time finding high-net-worth individuals to advertise
| too, because they all use adblock or avoid the open internet,
| preferring to stick to walled gardens like reddit and tiktok
| (which serve their own ads).
| adventured wrote:
| > Online advertising is dead
|
| Everything you just said is voided by the fact that Google's ad
| business continues to boom. It's going nowhere. And I say that
| as someone that dislikes Google. Your pitch is emotionalism,
| I've been reading rants like that on HN for the past ~15 years.
| They're in practically every thread on Google or advertising.
| Meanwhile Google has gotten 17 times larger in that span of
| time.
|
| Their business has doubled in size since the beginning of 2019.
| Their operating income has skyrocketed.
|
| When did the death struggle begin for them exactly?
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Only Google's search and youtube ad business continues to
| boom.
| rippercushions wrote:
| Which is "only", what, 90% of Google's business?
| candiddevmike wrote:
| Google booming doesn't necessarily mean OP is wrong. Go read
| some PPC forums and you'll see a pretty consistent trend on
| ad ROI going down everywhere. Folks may just be spending more
| trying to spend their way back to a low CPA.
| tbihl wrote:
| So, maybe the rot is there, but it hasn't quite died? And
| even then, we'll need the strong storm to knock it over.
| scarface74 wrote:
| Blackberry saw it's highest revenues in 2010. The iPhone has
| been out for 4 years and Android was just becoming popular.
| bongoman37 wrote:
| visarga wrote:
| That's also because they have to sell things we don't need to
| buy, 99.9% of the time. They don't have an offer for what I
| would buy today, they offer me something completely unrelated.
| The ads are not helpful. But if they focused on helpful ads
| their profits would be too small.
|
| Google once had the right approach - showing ads related to the
| search terms. It was polite and nicely delineated. But that
| wasn't going to earn them money from unrelated ad campaigns.
| hnbad wrote:
| If it's a duopoly, why do websites like this one ask me to
| consent to twenty thousand different ad networks?
|
| Of course that's not what the article means, but it's interesting
| that Google, Meta and TikTok are described as advertising giants
| when their products ostensibly serve different purposes. I wasn't
| aware they were comfortable with being so mask-off about the
| actual nature of what they are, namely vehicles to generate ad
| impressions.
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