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Google winning 98% ad spots it auctions off, after order to treat others equally

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Re: Google winning 98% ad spots it auctions off, after order to treat others equally

#71

Post by IncRnd »

ojbyrne wrote: post #38
115100 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It took less than 30 seconds to find out that they're not. https://www.ft.com/content/4044d354-b825-11dd-ac6d-0000779fd...

Do you have a citation that's not behind a paywall? Crunchbase says they were acquired by Yahoo. https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/kelkoo

> Crunchbase says they were acquired by Yahoo. https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/kelkoo

The information is on the crunchbase page you linked. You need to click on View All in the news section.

  Nov 25, 2008: Kelkoo: ZD Net — Yahoo sells shopping site Kelkoo | ZDNet
links to: http://www.zdnet.com/article/yahoo-sells-shopping-site-kelko...

Re: Google winning 98% ad spots it auctions off, after order to treat others equally

#72

Post by Whitestrake »

_raaq wrote: post #57

Can we not link paywalls?

While it doesn't address your request not to link them in the first place... For anyone looking to bypass the paywalls when they are linked: you can copy the article's title and search Google for `site:wsj.com [title]`.

Re: Google winning 98% ad spots it auctions off, after order to treat others equally

#73

Post by alant »

Whitestrake wrote: post #72
_raaq wrote: post #57

Can we not link paywalls?

While it doesn't address your request not to link them in the first place... For anyone looking to bypass the paywalls when they are linked: you can copy the article's title and search Google for `site:wsj.com [title]`.

Worked for me. what? Bypassing the paywwall is this simple? Does this work for other news sites with paywall?

Re: Google winning 98% ad spots it auctions off, after order to treat others equally

#74

Post by kyrra »

londons_explore wrote: post #61
NelsonMinar wrote: post #37

It's kind of a clever solution by Google, if a bit troll. They can make that ad auction 100% fair and still win it because they have more expertise on running efficient ad campaigns than anyone. IMHO that just doubles down on the danger of their monopoly power, but perhaps it complies with the antitrust requirements.

Most importantly they have more information about each auction than their competitors. They know for each user every other search result clicked. They know what the users interests are. They know which users prefer stuff delivered fast, which prefer the cheapest items, and which will be wooed by 50% off deals. They can use that data to present the best possible results, get the highest click through rate, and sell th…

Ad auctions have 100ms to reply to an auction request.[0] This does not give you a lot of time to display the perfect ad for a given customer or search. Especially when you need to do this at the volume that Google shoes ads.

[0] https://www.quora.com/How-do-ad-exchanges-and-real-time-bidd...

Re: Google winning 98% ad spots it auctions off, after order to treat others equally

#75

Post by comex »

savanaly wrote: post #69
natch wrote: post #6

Tell me if I've got this right: Say you have some businesses in industry X that all rely on advertising. Say one of those businesses also happens to own the dominant advertising platform that businesses in industry X need to use, in order to effectively find customers. (Special note for those subset of HN readers who tend not to read: Yes there may be other platforms, but before you present that as an objection, note…

>In this setup, the business that owns the advertising platform has an advantage over all other businesses in industry X, because it pays itself advertising revenue, where the other companies have to pay their competitor. So money is always being siphoned off to pay the advertising platform, with a cost to most businesses but a (near) zero cost to the business owning the platform. I don't think this is quite right. I…

But let’s say the spots are actually only worth $10, in terms of the ability to generate revenue. If you sell them to someone else for $20, you win because you get more money than the slots were worth. If you sell them to yourself for $20, you don’t lose any money and you can still make $10 (which is more than the slots originally cost you).

However, Google claims it is not doing this:

> As part of the change, Google said it would operate its shopping-ad service as if it were a profitable, standalone business to ensure doesn’t overbid for ads.

Still, “profitable” could be by the slimmest of margins, and Google would still have a strong incentive to keep the “standalone” business going (that is, the profit to their other business), whereas an independent company wouldn’t.

Re: Google winning 98% ad spots it auctions off, after order to treat others equally

#76

Post by Whitestrake »

alant wrote: post #73
Whitestrake wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While it doesn't address your request not to link them in the first place... For anyone looking to bypass the paywalls when they are linked: you can copy the article's title and search Google for `site:wsj.com [title]`.

Worked for me. what? Bypassing the paywwall is this simple? Does this work for other news sites with paywall?

Most news sites, yes. They want Google's crawler to crawl their full text, and Google responds poorly to sites that treat their crawler differently than real search users, so if your Referer (sic) header is Google, news sites will often give you the whole article.

Re: Google winning 98% ad spots it auctions off, after order to treat others equally

#77

Post by natch »

benchaney wrote: post #39
natch wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it need to be profitable? It seems to me that if it siphons money off from competitors, that's already enough to hurt the competitors relative to itself. In fact not only does the advertising not need to be profitable, even the sales of X do not need to be profitable, for the competitors to be harmed... dumping would be the extreme example of that. You are talking about a different aspect of the scenario, where…

If the service isn't profitable, then you are subsidizing the cost of a service that your competitors need. You aren't benefiting from the fact that your competitors are spending money. They would have had to spent money anyway.

Interesting... I started out pretty sure you were wrong about this but you and others are bringing me around. Good discussion.

Re: Google winning 98% ad spots it auctions off, after order to treat others equally

#78

Post by tinymollusk »

natch wrote: post #6

Tell me if I've got this right: Say you have some businesses in industry X that all rely on advertising. Say one of those businesses also happens to own the dominant advertising platform that businesses in industry X need to use, in order to effectively find customers. (Special note for those subset of HN readers who tend not to read: Yes there may be other platforms, but before you present that as an objection, note…

This sounds approximately correct, and is a good perspective for an entrepreneurial forum. This is what investors call a moat. It's such an effective one that we have legislation designed to deal with it.

This is not a comment on ethics or morality, it's simply one on strategic efficiency.

Re: Google winning 98% ad spots it auctions off, after order to treat others equally

#79

Post by taneq »

Ilverin wrote: post #24
natch wrote: post #6

Tell me if I've got this right: Say you have some businesses in industry X that all rely on advertising. Say one of those businesses also happens to own the dominant advertising platform that businesses in industry X need to use, in order to effectively find customers. (Special note for those subset of HN readers who tend not to read: Yes there may be other platforms, but before you present that as an objection, note…

I think this effect is small because of opportunity cost. In Case A, google wins the bid, they gain the ad space, but gain no revenue. In Case B, google does not win the bid, they lose the ad space, but do gain revenue. Revenue and ad space are mutually exclusive, each is the opportunity cost of the other. Yes, in both cases google wins, but that is because google is the reason the ad space exists in the first place.

Google can 'print' as many ad spaces as they want, and buy back the ones that don't reach their minimum price.

Re: Google winning 98% ad spots it auctions off, after order to treat others equally

#80

Post by daveFNbuck »

comex wrote: post #75
savanaly wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In this setup, the business that owns the advertising platform has an advantage over all other businesses in industry X, because it pays itself advertising revenue, where the other companies have to pay their competitor. So money is always being siphoned off to pay the advertising platform, with a cost to most businesses but a (near) zero cost to the business owning the platform. I don't think this is quite right. I…

But let’s say the spots are actually only worth $10, in terms of the ability to generate revenue. If you sell them to someone else for $20, you win because you get more money than the slots were worth. If you sell them to yourself for $20, you don’t lose any money and you can still make $10 (which is more than the slots originally cost you). However, Google claims it is not doing this: > As part of the change, Google…

If you sell them to yourself for $20, you have your original $100, plus the $10 * 5 dollars in ads, for a total of $150. Because $150 is less than $200, this means that diverting the ads to yourself loses you money.
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