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Alphabet slides 5% after missing earnings expectations on revenue of $20.3B

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Re: Alphabet slides 5% after missing earnings expectations on revenue of $20.3B

#31

Post by petra »

eru wrote: post #25
adevine wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the majority of that online advertising income comes from ads on their own search results pages, not from adsense ads.

One can still block those. My adblocker does by default.

If push comes to shove Google can do any number of things to fight against ads. For example, it started, silently, without explaining,for some who remove ads in youtube, to stop the video in the middle.

Heck even creating a credible enough rumor that blocking google search ads seriously degrades results could have a material impact.

Re: Alphabet slides 5% after missing earnings expectations on revenue of $20.3B

#32

Post by tyingq »

arebop wrote: post #15
tyingq wrote: post #8

"Paid clicks for Google were up 29 percent year-over-year for the first quarter" I'm amazed this trend continues. Page views almost certainly were NOT up 29% yoy. Meaning that clicks are growing faster than page views, in a big way, every single quarter, for years. That's what sets the investor expectations, but I don't see a way this trend continues forever. There's only so much room for additional ads, ad optimizat…

The overwhelming majority of impressions do not result in clicks, so there is plenty of room for clicks per page view to increase.

You don't see an end there?

Ad clicks have been outpacing traffic for quite some time now. It wasn't always that way..it used to track the same.

At some point, there's no real estate left to push ads into, or you are as optimized as you can get.

Or, you play that game too far and consumers react in a different way (ad blockers, etc).

Re: Alphabet slides 5% after missing earnings expectations on revenue of $20.3B

#33

Post by pmyjavec »

educar wrote: post #30

So, Google makes fantastic products. Much of our online interaction involves Google in some way or the other. And the only way these guys have figured to make money is ads. Why can't they sell products and be like an Apple, Oracle, Microsoft. I am guessing it's too much work to grow in such a massive pace without ads. Ads are a marketers/sales persons dream and these marketers are very likely to spend money. This ad…

Agreed, I actually moved to Fastmail recently and it costs me annually but the lack of being the product and actually a customer feels nice.

Re: Alphabet slides 5% after missing earnings expectations on revenue of $20.3B

#34

Post by nightski »

pmyjavec wrote: post #33
educar wrote: post #30

So, Google makes fantastic products. Much of our online interaction involves Google in some way or the other. And the only way these guys have figured to make money is ads. Why can't they sell products and be like an Apple, Oracle, Microsoft. I am guessing it's too much work to grow in such a massive pace without ads. Ads are a marketers/sales persons dream and these marketers are very likely to spend money. This ad…

Agreed, I actually moved to Fastmail recently and it costs me annually but the lack of being the product and actually a customer feels nice.

Another customer of Fastmail. It has served my well and overall has been a much better experience than Google Apps.

Re: Alphabet slides 5% after missing earnings expectations on revenue of $20.3B

#35

Post by pmyjavec »

I wonder if other search engines are also starting to catch up?

I've been using DuckDuckGo for a while now and there was a time when it felt like I was missing out; However the product has improved dramatically of late and forget I'm no longer using Google.

Re: Alphabet slides 5% after missing earnings expectations on revenue of $20.3B

#36

Post by petra »

educar wrote: post #30

So, Google makes fantastic products. Much of our online interaction involves Google in some way or the other. And the only way these guys have figured to make money is ads. Why can't they sell products and be like an Apple, Oracle, Microsoft. I am guessing it's too much work to grow in such a massive pace without ads. Ads are a marketers/sales persons dream and these marketers are very likely to spend money. This ad…

The problem is not that nobody wants to pay, but that in the digital economy, content and many software products are relatively easy to copy. And once you got that, you know that the cheapest guy will win and take most of your customers, so why not be the cheapest guy, especially if it pays very well ?

The other option is to make your product hard to copy by network effects or data collection, but again, here it's natural for the cheapest guy to win.

Re: Alphabet slides 5% after missing earnings expectations on revenue of $20.3B

#37

Post by tma-1 »

adevine wrote: post #20
tma-1 wrote: post #11

Long-term, I am not very bullish on Google/Alphabet. More than 90% of their profits come online advertising, something that can be easily blocked for life with a simple browser extension/plugin. Some worrying figures[1]: * US ad blocking grew by 48% to reach 45 million active users in 12 months up to June 2015. * Ad blocking grew by 41% globally in the last 12 months. * US ad blocking grew by 48% to reach 45 million…

But the majority of that online advertising income comes from ads on their own search results pages, not from adsense ads.

Ad blockers block those by default.

Re: Alphabet slides 5% after missing earnings expectations on revenue of $20.3B

#38

Post by Steko »

rhino369 wrote: post #29
tma-1 wrote: post #11

Long-term, I am not very bullish on Google/Alphabet. More than 90% of their profits come online advertising, something that can be easily blocked for life with a simple browser extension/plugin. Some worrying figures[1]: * US ad blocking grew by 48% to reach 45 million active users in 12 months up to June 2015. * Ad blocking grew by 41% globally in the last 12 months. * US ad blocking grew by 48% to reach 45 million…

>More than 90% of their profits come online advertising, something that can be easily blocked for life with a simple browser extension/plugin. If I were Tim Cook, I'd be at least a little tempted to update iOS and OSX to include adblocking on by default.

Google would have no problem forcing ads into the main SERP hose if it came to Microsoft or Apple blocking by default.

Re: Alphabet slides 5% after missing earnings expectations on revenue of $20.3B

#39

Post by petra »

pmyjavec wrote: post #35

I wonder if other search engines are also starting to catch up? I've been using DuckDuckGo for a while now and there was a time when it felt like I was missing out; However the product has improved dramatically of late and forget I'm no longer using Google.

Its hard to believe, because tracking and especially tracking over search history both over the immediate term and the somewhat longer term is exactly what enables Google to surface such good results.

Re: Alphabet slides 5% after missing earnings expectations on revenue of $20.3B

#40

Post by nightski »

petra wrote: post #31
eru wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One can still block those. My adblocker does by default.

If push comes to shove Google can do any number of things to fight against ads. For example, it started, silently, without explaining,for some who remove ads in youtube, to stop the video in the middle. Heck even creating a credible enough rumor that blocking google search ads seriously degrades results could have a material impact.

This would be a good thing in the long run. It would open the door to paid services that could be competitive. Currently YouTube is free and there are no consequences for blocking ads. It's funny, I didn't even realize that YouTube had ads until I turned off my ad blocker one day. I was amazed at how awful the experience was...
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