Earlier quoted context omitted.
Short selling. But be careful with margin calls.
Shorting has a specific delivery date, which is different from holding stock because you can choose when to sell it.
I don’t believe that’s right.
The math’s not pretty on digital advertising’s future revenues? (2017)
141–150 of 176 posts
Re: The math’s not pretty on digital advertising’s future revenues? (2017)
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
>There's no sign that this model could work at scale for a large corporation. Why should it? Most of the content people are now enjoying day to day isn't coming from large corporations. What we're witnessing now is the infancy of a shift away from the centralization of entertainment started by the industrial revolution (with access to printing presses, radio broadcasting, etc being relatively limited by economies of…
Well, we are discussing if Google and Facebook's digital ad revenues will be able to continue to rise. If Google is going to show ads on a content creator's channel because they map to the demographic I want to advertise to, what is stopping me from just cutting out Google and paying the content creator directly? That way I can exercise more fine-grained control over what my ads don't show up next to, the content cre…
Because that doesn’t scale, that’s why
Re: The math’s not pretty on digital advertising’s future revenues? (2017)
#143Elon musk seems to have digital advertising figured with a spend with goog/facebrick/etc of precisely $0. Why is this so seldom mentioned when digital advertising is mentioned? He sells a crapload of stuff with fantastic advertising campaigns with no paid spots at all.
By that metric, so does Trump. Twitter doesn't send them a bill because they make money for Twitter by existing, so maybe it's really Twitter that has it figured out. The big names work for Twitter for free! It's true that for certain kinds of people and circumstances you can sell your own brand. But generally people cannot be Musk or Trump (least of all want to take any risks) so they have to pay for eyeballs.
I'm avoiding politicians because sensible discussion points are obscured by emotion, to put it nicely.
Rather than a politician. try "Wendy's" burger joint twiter feed and it is largely the same point. Advertising works a hell of a lot better when you're not paying for the slots. I can't see a meaningful discussion of digital without addressing it. Musk hires talent from "the onion" - we can assume it isn't to design rockets and cars, right? Flamethrowers, awesome, right. Can't make money selling them obviously. How much did that campaign cost him? Nothing in placement slots right but there it was in a better slot than can be bought from facebrick all over facebrick. In a better slot than can be bought from google in newspapers with google ads being ignored somewhere on the same page.
Remember when google were hiring engineers like they meant it and had all that nonsense about secret codes and quizzes all around the web? Remember when they hired 17 year olds in a fanfare of publicity? Remember when they placed an ad-sense ad saying they were hiring? Well that last never happened as far as I'm aware and the cost to google would have been next to nothing, so maybe it wasn't worth even that. They hired a lot of direct marketers to ring us and tell us we should apply though, right?
Pick your successful ad campaign. It doesn't involve paying google, or facebrick, or does it? Do go ahead and list any examples that have escaped my notice. I can't think of a business that got on ad-sense or facebrick early and took a huge market share out of their competition as a result, can you? Do you even have to think to come up with a list for TV early adopters?
I can't see how digital advertising discussions can be fruitful without addressing these things.
Re: The math’s not pretty on digital advertising’s future revenues? (2017)
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
> other services can easily be replaced I agree with you regarding services that are entirely technology-based (GDocs, Drive, etc.) but so much of Google is the definition of a monopoly (in the sense of "hard to enter the market"): - You can't replace Gmail without keeping your Google account open so that any old emails get forwarded to your new address (although this is a problem with any old mail server) - Google M…
> don't care enough about the content creator to download another app just to watch their content. The HTML5 video tag exists - you don't need "another app", though you might need another video host. There's very little inherent difference between YT and any other popular, large site. They host videos? Video is not that much more bulky than other website content anyway. (At least if you avoid gold-plating the service…
This is such bullshit!
YouTube’s video streaming infra is a masterpiece of engineering and magnitudes of order better than a vanilla streaming setup!
You might not notice because you live in a place with great internet...but most people don’t!
Re: The math’s not pretty on digital advertising’s future revenues? (2017)
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
Low single digits is fine when you're among the biggest companies on the planet. We're talking about 10s of billions in profit. Amazon is now getting into the space and is a strong contender to become #3 biggest player.
Size is not insurance against failure. Go ask Novell.
Nobody is claiming that it is. The point is that single-digit growth is fine when you're big because they are percentages.
The 1000% growth when you're a startup does not exist when you're worth half a trillion.
Re: The math’s not pretty on digital advertising’s future revenues? (2017)
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
Size is not insurance against failure. Go ask Novell.
Nobody is claiming that it is. The point is that single-digit growth is fine when you're big because they are percentages. The 1000% growth when you're a startup does not exist when you're worth half a trillion.
True, it just depends how fast your next competitor is growing.
Re: The math’s not pretty on digital advertising’s future revenues? (2017)
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, we are discussing if Google and Facebook's digital ad revenues will be able to continue to rise. If Google is going to show ads on a content creator's channel because they map to the demographic I want to advertise to, what is stopping me from just cutting out Google and paying the content creator directly? That way I can exercise more fine-grained control over what my ads don't show up next to, the content cre…
Because that doesn’t scale, that’s why
Then AI it to scale.
Re: The math’s not pretty on digital advertising’s future revenues? (2017)
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your point only highlights my own. The Netflix strategy is to try new things out, largely sans data, and then turn the dial up on things that perform well.
No, it's exactly the opposite. They, with data, identify niche markets that don't currently have programming, and create programming to fill those voids.
Man. If they “don’t currently have programming,” then there is a straight up lack of data.
I get what you’re saying, but I think you miss the point, which is that currently - contrary to superficial thought - data offers little creative power.
Identifying underserved domains through data or a lack thereof is not the same as “using data to create art.”
Re: The math’s not pretty on digital advertising’s future revenues? (2017)
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
The moment you owe the stocks thats the moment your view will be biased. Anyways Google search is most likely at its peak because next evolution of internet is voice control. And take it from horse mouth - Google CEO on shareholders call said he is most concern about voice controlled search. Because you know, its hard to show people ads when they use voice to get search result.
And we move nearly full circle back to radio-style ads.
drink your ovaltine.
Re: The math’s not pretty on digital advertising’s future revenues? (2017)
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not too familiar with other media companies so I don't know what the correct multiple should be, but here's my math on Google: 1. Over the past 13 years world GDP per capita has grown about 3% per year. So it's reasonable to think that the people who are currently connected to the internet will on average be 30% richer in 10 years 2. The average amount of time that people spend on the internet could grow 20% in 1…
> 1. Over the past 13 years world GDP per capita has grown about 3% per year. So it's reasonable to think that the people who are currently connected to the internet will on average be 30% richer in 10 years A bit more from compounding, but ya. However, that's priced into every company's multiple. > 2. The average amount of time that people spend on the internet could grow 20% in 10 years And you think Google will ca…
>> 2. The average amount of time that people spend on the internet could grow 20% in 10 years
> And you think Google will capture all of that?
No, but it's reasonable to think that Google will capture a share of that growth in proportion to their current share.
>> 3. The amount of advertising Google can show per hour might be 20% higher in 10 years
> Why?
See my earlier comment about Youtube and The Economist. There's also the chance that Twitter decides to outsource their ads to Google.
> > 4. Google might improve its ad algorithm 10% per year - ie. 160% over 10 years.
> 10% more profitable every year for 10 years? I'm not going to say that can't possibly happen, but you'd have to walk me through the physics of exactly how you think that's possible. Do keep in mind that Google makes money by showing people ads. They can increase their profits by:
> 1. Showing more ads per user
> 2. Getting more users
> 3. Charging more for ads (to do this, they'd have to improve efficacy, which, by the way, they don't capture all of because part of the surplus efficiency the advertisers will want for themselves)
> 4. Reducing their costs
When I say "improve its ad algorithm" I'm talking about improving the match between the viewer and the advertiser - and therefore being able to charge more for ads. Based on my personal experience with Google ads I think there's a lot of room for improvement. Here are some examples in addition to the cat food example I gave earlier:
(a) Last year I demonstrated interested in buying a Pixel 2 phone, so Google started showing me Pixel 2 ads. Fair enough. But then it kept showing me the ads even after I had purchased the phone and was viewing the ads on a Pixel 2 phone
(b) Last year I wanted to buy a Macbook Pro, and I went as far as configuring it on the Apple website and putting it in my shopping cart. But then I got cold feet and didn't buy it for 6 months. In that time I never once saw an ad on Facebook or Google for Macbook Pros. Apple were leaving a lot of money on the table by not hooking up with Google.
(c) Google shows me sports betting ads all the time, despite the fact that I've never been in a betting shop or placed an online bet. (Google has 4 years of my location history and 14 years worth of my email history)
(d) Earlier this year I was shown an ad for Audible every single time I opened YouTube. I must have seen 20 ads per day for the same product. It was very annoying and I suspect Google would make more money by showing a variety of ads
(e) When I buy an airline flight Google adds it to my calendar but still shows me ads for that flight.
(f) Browsing the New York Times app just now I'm shown a "Quit Smoking" ad despite the fact that I've never smoked in my life.
(g) I read about a Facebook user who is vegan but saw in her Facebook profile that one of the advertisers specifically targeting her was KFC.