The Digital Advertising Duopoly • Hacker News Board

Re: The Digital Advertising Duopoly

#101

Post by manigandham » Fri, Dec 29, 2017, 2:34 PM UTC

rhizome wrote: post #81

manigandham wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We tried this - there's a lot of political and business issues that basically mean you can't pull it off unless you're a major player (like Verizon or Google) already. Selling the data (of which one of the uses is advertising) is more lucrative than letting users pay direct, and that's before overcoming the hurdle of most consumers who think that they already pay for "the internet" including all the content. Google's…

Forgive me if this is naïve, but how does Joe Random site owner participate in the selling of data? My impression is that that's an area of commerce with a pretty closed membership. I'm not asking in order to do something like this, just that I think it's an interesting question about exactly who is able to profit from activities that are somewhat assumed to be occurring everywhere, and not by and within the ad netwo…

I was talking about the companies that would be in the position to do subscription bundle handling, and they're more interested in the current situation.

Publishers can participate in selling user logins and analytics data through various data companies, they're always interested in more data and especially anything unique that your site adds. You should have a certain scale though for the contract to be worth it, otherwise if its just a personal blog then you're probably just limited to run adding some ads from the typical ad networks.

Re: The Digital Advertising Duopoly

#102

Post by jpadkins » Fri, Dec 29, 2017, 2:35 PM UTC

tannhaeuser wrote: post #51

All that needed to happen is that the authority responsible for enforcing US antitrust laws vetoed against the acquisition of DoubleClick by Google and of Whatsapp by Facebook. Why haven't they?

both of those acquisitions contribute a small amount to each companies earnings. There will still be a duopoly without those acquisitions.

Re: The Digital Advertising Duopoly

#103

Post by jpadkins » Fri, Dec 29, 2017, 2:37 PM UTC

mlinksva wrote: post #20

username223 wrote: post #7

These people project that we'll be setting $105 billion on fire for digital ads by 2019. To put that in perspective, it's more than 10% of what we spend to provide health care to seniors and poor people via a mostly dysfunctional health care system: https://www.hhs.gov/about/budget/fy2017/budget-in-brief/cms/...

Solution: tax ads.

we already do

Re: The Digital Advertising Duopoly

#104

Post by brndnmtthws » Fri, Dec 29, 2017, 3:34 PM UTC

otp124 wrote: post #95

organsnyder wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've switched to using Firefox Focus as my main Android browser. It provides ad blocking and privacy features. For apps, I try to avoid ad-supported ones whenever possible, and am happy to pay for apps that I find useful.

Does the focus app block ads on Android Chrome mobile? On iOS it does.

It does not block ads, but it does block ad trackers.

Re: The Digital Advertising Duopoly

#105

Post by mlinksva » Fri, Dec 29, 2017, 6:25 PM UTC

jpadkins wrote: post #103

mlinksva wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solution: tax ads.

we already do

I don't know what jurisdiction you're in, but would love a reference.

As far as I know in the U.S. there's a long history of talking about specifically taxing ads, but very little and brief doing. One overview: http://www.taxhistory.org/thp/readings.nsf/ArtWeb/E6C2E18E1E...

Re: The Digital Advertising Duopoly

#106

Post by bdibs » Fri, Dec 29, 2017, 9:26 PM UTC

DashRattlesnake wrote: post #71

bdibs wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d actually guess it’s the opposite. Why pay for a news subscription when you can get “news” for free on Facebook and the like.

> Why pay for a news subscription when you can get “news” for free on Facebook and the like. Did you miss the whole Facebook "fake news" thing last year?

That’s why I put news in quotation marks, I actually have a couple news subscriptions and no Facebook account.

Re: The Digital Advertising Duopoly

#107

Post by brucephillips » Fri, Dec 29, 2017, 10:53 PM UTC

DashRattlesnake wrote: post #72

brucephillips wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how does WeChat do that?

IIRC, by being a ubiquitous mobile payments platform.

That's a good point. Monopolies can be better than open competition at creating standards.

Re: The Digital Advertising Duopoly

#108

Post by CurtMonash » Sat, Dec 30, 2017, 5:43 PM UTC

amoorthy wrote: post #13

jasode wrote: post #11

>I don’t think subscriptions are the only answer here, as many do. >We need models that support free consumption of media for many reasons. If you rule out paid subscriptions to subsidize the freeriders, what options are left for "free" consumption? Either advertisements or a government-sponsored system (e.g. citizens taxed to support the BBC tv channels). If there's a crypto financing option that Fred is hinting at,…

Any idea why Fred is not a believer in subscriptions? My hypothesis is subscriptions, for news at least, are all-or-nothing propositions. But in a world where there's so much content, much of it for free, we will only want to bypass a paywall for a given site occasionally when we encounter it. Why hasn't someone built a variable subscription model that is geared to one's reading habits?

A subscription is like a gate that gives you admission to certain content. As a general rule, the gate that gives you admission to the MOST content wins. Illustrative examples include:

-- Search engines clobbering "portals". -- The huge subscription market for Bloomberg, et al. (In its early years, Bloomberg consistently offered more information than its competitors.) -- ASCAP. -- Netflix. -- Kindle Unlimited.

More limited subscriptions can of course succeed if their value propositions are sufficiently simple and compelling. For example: -- Pre-internet, business newsletters and almanacs had a good market, especially if they had valuable and unique raw information. -- Pre-internet, the only categories of consumer newsletter that had good markets were in investments and health. In both those cases, the value proposition is pretty clear. -- Our household subscribes to HBO almost solely for Game of Thrones.

Re: The Digital Advertising Duopoly

#109

Post by rhizome » Sat, Dec 30, 2017, 6:51 PM UTC

hatmagic456 wrote: post #89

rhizome wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forgive me if this is naïve, but how does Joe Random site owner participate in the selling of data? My impression is that that's an area of commerce with a pretty closed membership. I'm not asking in order to do something like this, just that I think it's an interesting question about exactly who is able to profit from activities that are somewhat assumed to be occurring everywhere, and not by and within the ad netwo…

The only places that buy and sell user data are spammy mailing lists. That's it. Browser history predicts almost nothing, anyway. There is no market where user data is bought and sold, except for spammy mailing lists to other spammy mailing lists.

Have you ever heard of "the entire market research industry?" It's about 100 years old.

Re: The Digital Advertising Duopoly

#110

Post by rhizome » Sat, Dec 30, 2017, 6:53 PM UTC

majani wrote: post #87

rhizome wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to see an industry by which companies or their advertising reps engage with sites in a subscription-like mechanism for direct advertising. Cutting out the middleman seems like a logical step in this day and age.

Subscription to ads would mean a lot of waste in the budget. Very few advertisers would go for that over CPC/CPA pricing

It's not subscription to ads, it's advertisers subscribing themselves into sites.