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The math’s not pretty on digital advertising’s future revenues? (2017)

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Re: The math’s not pretty on digital advertising’s future revenues? (2017)

#21
post #7

So, here we are in 2017 Here we almost are in 2019. The authors premise seems sound, but it hasn’t happened (yet).

Looking forward to seeing this posted in 2021 and 2023 with the hypothesized massive drop in google’s valuation having failed to materialize.

To be fair the P/E will start to move towards 12. That's just inevitable.

If the P/E moves from the 39.37 I just Googled towards 12, the profit needs to triple to maintain share value. Heck, it was over 60 to start the year: https://ycharts.com/companies/GOOG/pe_ratio, and that seems a little insane to me.

Re: The math’s not pretty on digital advertising’s future revenues? (2017)

#22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Buy options" and "don't put this in to your passive retirement fund" are two very different levels of gloom-and-dooming. The market might actually become rational over the next 50+ years; there is such a thing as true information that can't be used to make money in any reasonable term. Another example of true information that can't be used to make money is information that is already priced in. Since this author is…

The difference between "buy options" and "don't put this in your passive retirement fund" is the same difference as "I'm confident in the advice im dispensing" and "I have no idea what I'm talking about".

The difference between "buy options" and "don't put this in your passive retirement fund" is the same difference as "I'm confident in the advice im dispensing" and "I have no idea what I'm talking about".

No, it's not at all. Buying options is actively betting on both price and time targets, and carries a much different risk profile compared to simply avoiding a specific investment.

Re: The math’s not pretty on digital advertising’s future revenues? (2017)

#23

lead sentence: “Today, its market cap — the total value of the company ...” really? there’s a single person reading this that won’t know what market cap is? i stopped reading. edit: also, TFA is dated material and could use a 2017 tag. also important because its predictions have failed to come true.

ok i just read the article. it is indeed written at the 8th grade level implied by the opening, with naive understanding of google and disney’s business. nice waste of my time.

can’t understand the downvotes but that’s HN i guess. have to spell everything out here

Re: The math’s not pretty on digital advertising’s future revenues? (2017)

#25

This article completely missed the forest for the trees - the battle for TV is not just a battle for content, it’s a battle for the delivery medium itself! Think about it - how was TV delivered to you before? There are over the air broadcast, satellite, cable/settop, and what’s been called OTT. Except, more and more settop boxes are Rokus, Android TV-based and even some Apple TVs (Verizon 5G was offering those in tes…

As you say, the delivery method changes and no one cares. At the end of the day, nothing matters but the content. Look at Disney muscling providers around.

Re: The math’s not pretty on digital advertising’s future revenues? (2017)

#26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference between "buy options" and "don't put this in your passive retirement fund" is the same difference as "I'm confident in the advice im dispensing" and "I have no idea what I'm talking about".

The difference between "buy options" and "don't put this in your passive retirement fund" is the same difference as "I'm confident in the advice im dispensing" and "I have no idea what I'm talking about". No, it's not at all. Buying options is actively betting on both price and time targets, and carries a much different risk profile compared to simply avoiding a specific investment.

Buying a stock is a "rise eventually" bet, I wonder if it is even possible to buy a "fall eventually" bet. Probably not because nobody would be willing to bet that a company will be around forever!

Re: The math’s not pretty on digital advertising’s future revenues? (2017)

#27
Another nonsensical article about adtech. This is not how the industry works.

Apple does not have a chance at buying Google because they have the same market cap. Google and Facebook have a massive advantage in scale and precision which is why 2 of the top 10 biggest companies on the planet are ad networks. The valuations come from the sheer profit they generate, not their assets, and how much Disney spends on content is utterly irrelevant. You cannot easily replicate what they do otherwise it would've already been done. Half of the world's population still isn't online so there's plenty of room for growth in the future too.

Everyone loves to talk about waste but skip over how much worse it is with TV and print ads. What matters is getting a positive return. Even if you can't measure anything else, you can see what sales were like before and after doing any advertising, and that's as simple as it gets. Advertising is a key component of marketing, and marketing is how a company grows and creates customers, so unless you change human behavior advertising is not going away.

Re: The math’s not pretty on digital advertising’s future revenues? (2017)

#28
post #15
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how much of the internet is powered by digital advertising? The web will look a lot different if that bubble bursts.

Going back to what it was 20 years ago? I'm sold!

There was basically nothing on the internet 20 years ago.

Re: The math’s not pretty on digital advertising’s future revenues? (2017)

#29

It's important to bring up that in the last year AT&T bought Time Warner, Direct TV, and other media companies, as well as As Tech pioneer AppNexus to try and merge Digital, OTT, and linear advertising all together in an effort to make up ground on Google and Facebook

They're already failing at that with nonsensical rebrands and rotating leadership. You can't compete with the giants by buying a bunch of companies and strapping their products together. That just leads to a dysfunctional mess.

They need to build from scratch with a focused approach as seen with The Trade Desk, but their corporate politics won't let that happen.

Re: The math’s not pretty on digital advertising’s future revenues? (2017)

#30
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Going back to what it was 20 years ago? I'm sold!

If the web went back to what it was 20 years ago that would be economically catastrophic, I mean if it happened like nearly instantly, if it happened over a space of 10-15 years OK.

In the context of the quote, let’s ignore non-ad based stuff, like amazon’s shipping network, and online banking.

In what way would resetting the ad based parts 20 years be catastrophic?

Were RSS and semi-curated news portals like yahoo and google news that much worse for publishers? (I thought they were actually better, economically, than FB...)

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