Sometimes I click ads just to give money to Google.
Google Profits Surge on Strong Ad Demand
51–60 of 177 posts
Re: Google Profits Surge on Strong Ad Demand
#52In other words, Google profits surge because it is using TensorFlow to accurately predict how to price ads to maximize revenue.
That's not how it works at all. It's a market: there is a limited supply of impressions/clicks, and it is _buyers_ who decide the price. Buyers are rational -- I like to take that charitable view at least -- and are bidding less than the value to their businesses of those clicks. CPCs are actually down on average. If that's true, then it must be simply inventory growth: mobile is providing ever more interaction point…
Market prices are determined by the intersection of supply and demand, so it is not just the buyers who choose. Google has some say over the supply. They may increase or decrease the supply based on behavior they sense more broadly in search.
It's amazing to see on HN that some of the times I am most right, I am also most downvoted. Life lessons...
Re: Google Profits Surge on Strong Ad Demand
#53Its so bizarre to me. You'd think there would be a finite appetite for advertising, but apparently not.
There is. Advertising as a share of GDP has been flat for like 75 years. But what we see here is a platform shift away from TV and print and to the interwebs. There are a lot of convergent trends happening to drive this. Older TV watchers dying off, explosion of pocket computers, fragmentation of TV ad market by rise of cable channels, etc.
Re: Google Profits Surge on Strong Ad Demand
#54Serious question: How does Google's ad revenue increase when Google themselves were saying people aren't clicking on adwords as much when searching in mobile? Also when people are using voice search such as Siri or Google Now, they are not even seeing the ad results.
They definitely seem to have a way to get you to accidentally click on their mobile display ads while your scrolling through the page. I always get stuck with that and have to go back.
Re: Google Profits Surge on Strong Ad Demand
#55This is all good news for our industry. Soft numbers among the top players trickle down in the form of reduced demand and investor interest for earlier stage companies. Good numbers send a signal that the industry is healthy. Edit: wow stepped on a mysterious hater button. :P
> our industry Who does 'our' refer to here? Clicking your profile, it's not clear whom you work for, so I sure hope it doesn't refer to hackers of hacker news in general.
He refers to tech startups.
Re: Google Profits Surge on Strong Ad Demand
#56Its so bizarre to me. You'd think there would be a finite appetite for advertising, but apparently not.
I think we'd see a surge in ad purchasing right before the death of it. Why does no one see this uptick in ad spending a potential indicator that advertisers are getting less of their money's worth?
Possibly because that's not how advertising budgets are really set? Nobody says "lets throw more cash at the thing that isn't working anymore". Certainly people will accept slimmer margins if they're still making money but every ad campaign has KPIs that are optimized for and no VP of Marketing is going to keep their job by accepting a status-quo of less effective, more costly advertising.
Re: Google Profits Surge on Strong Ad Demand
#57After hours is through the roof. It's currently at $808 as of this time. I wouldn't be surprised if Google is the world's most valuable company tomorrow.
Re: Google Profits Surge on Strong Ad Demand
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
Zero chance of that. Facebook will be doing $16 to $20 billion in profit within five or so years. They'll have accumulated $60 to $80 billion in cash. They'll have a half trillion dollar market cap in the next few years. They'll liberally use the cash and market cap to buy into any market they're missing out on, just as Microsoft purchased LinkedIn and Skype to try to stay in the game. These types of companies do not…
With logic like that it's remarkable that our markets aren't dominated by 50, 100, 200, even 500 year old goliaths. "They're big! They'll be here forever and only get bigger!"
I never said or implied such a thing, you're exaggerating.
What I said, is that it's the exception for a tech juggernaut to 'get eaten for lunch.' And that is indeed a fact.
Oracle, Microsoft, Intel, HP, Dell, Cisco, Google, Amazon, IBM, Texas Instruments, SAP, EMC, Qualcomm, Samsung, Apple
Where's the lunch eating? Where's the wasteland of destruction of tech titans? Most of those are now old companies, some are very old.
Now name a dozen plus companies of comparable sizes in terms of sales that have actually been destroyed in the last 30 years. It is thus that it's the exception, exactly as I said.
Re: Google Profits Surge on Strong Ad Demand
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think we'd see a surge in ad purchasing right before the death of it. Why does no one see this uptick in ad spending a potential indicator that advertisers are getting less of their money's worth?
Possibly because that's not how advertising budgets are really set? Nobody says "lets throw more cash at the thing that isn't working anymore". Certainly people will accept slimmer margins if they're still making money but every ad campaign has KPIs that are optimized for and no VP of Marketing is going to keep their job by accepting a status-quo of less effective, more costly advertising.
Except that's the fundamental issue of advertising? Attribution has always been wickedly difficult. It was supposed to be easy with Google/FB (click -> sale, duh), but now people are clicking on fewer and fewer ads, so Google/Facebook et al. are repositioning as "oh no, they saw our ads for x seconds, we definitely swayed them."
Re: Google Profits Surge on Strong Ad Demand
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
Zero chance of that. Facebook will be doing $16 to $20 billion in profit within five or so years. They'll have accumulated $60 to $80 billion in cash. They'll have a half trillion dollar market cap in the next few years. They'll liberally use the cash and market cap to buy into any market they're missing out on, just as Microsoft purchased LinkedIn and Skype to try to stay in the game. These types of companies do not…
With logic like that it's remarkable that our markets aren't dominated by 50, 100, 200, even 500 year old goliaths. "They're big! They'll be here forever and only get bigger!"
Not believing that "a company of FB's size will implode in 10 years" doesn't imply belief in "a company of FB's size will never implode."