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Google says it doesn't monopolize digital ad market – senators don't buy it

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Re: Google says it doesn't monopolize digital ad market – senators don't buy it

#171

Post by dylan604 »

yellowstuff wrote: post #71
tehlike wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fb could disrupt google because it had the impressions first, so that is the dimension to think about. Adspend and advertiser pool is a by product. Disclaimer: current fb, ex google employee.

I'd think that if someone has the intention to buy but doesn't have a site in mind, they'll usually use Google: like "best mortgage rates" or "american girl doll clothes". I can see FB ads being better for raising interest in a product to a targeted demographic, but I'd assume that the Google ads that are very close to the point of sale are much more valuable. What am I missing?

It's 2 different things to me. Buying an ad on Facebook is an attempt to get a specific ad campaign in front of specific users without the user specifically requesting it. Buying an ad on Google means getting your advertised item in front of a user as a result from a user's search. Either way, the user is now just one click away from getting to your advertised product, so I'm not seeing how Google is any closer than Facebook is. Facebook is passively placing your ad in front of a user, where Google's is active from the point of view of the user's actions. That's just for ad placement within the Google Search. I'm sure Google is doing the same passive ad placement in its other ad distribution arms.

Re: Google says it doesn't monopolize digital ad market – senators don't buy it

#172

Post by temp667 »

tw04 wrote: post #157

I find it ridiculously disingenuous of the DOJ to pursue Google for "monopoly" of the advertising market, while allowing Sinclair Broadcasting to do literally the exact same thing to local TV stations and the related local advertising markets. While this may not be a political witch hunt - it sure quacks like a duck. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_Broadcast_Group

Yep - these same govt officials falling over themselves to actually remove long standing laws and protections in this area. It's so political its horrible.

Re: Google says it doesn't monopolize digital ad market – senators don't buy it

#173

Post by V6HBGNQHU »

ricardo81 wrote: post #12

The UK recently evaluated the online ad market and found that Google and Facebook commanded 70% of all online ad spend in the country [0]. Their large pool of advertisers also helps them command a higher return per search compared to other platforms, allowing them to outbid its peers to become the default search choice on devices, e.g. Apple products. Their lack of privacy sensitive policy also helps their ad targeti…

Blame the people spending that spend.

Re: Google says it doesn't monopolize digital ad market – senators don't buy it

#174

Post by jellicle »

doukdouk wrote: post #70
throwaway_kufu wrote: post #66

What so many people fail to realize about these issues vis-a-vis Google, it’s not so much the issues of Google having a monopoly or not on the ad market...in either case google is a dominant market incumbent that uses its position (in this case web traffic, data and online ad platform) to unfairly compete and stifle competition. Google has often used data acquired through their market position to start subsidiaries t…

Words get abused a lot, and for some of them, they do not have a clear-cut, universally agreed upon meaning. "Monopoly" is one of such words (others candidate include: freedom, democracy, justice). When random person X complains about, say, Google having a monopoly, there are two possibilities: - Person X means something along "Google has a dominant market position and abuses its power", slightly abusing the meaning…

To be clear if anyone has any doubt, antitrust law talks about firms having "market power". That's all that is required; the ability to move the market in bad ways. A monopoly (strict definition) is not in any way required to violate antitrust law. You could violate antitrust law with a 5% market share.

People wanting to nitpick about the word monopoly should be educated (first offense) or mocked and shunned (repeat intentional offenders).

Google has a 73% share of online advertising, according to a random study from 2019.

Re: Google says it doesn't monopolize digital ad market – senators don't buy it

#175

Post by [deleted] »

rtx wrote: post #67
manigandham wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what happened. The question was asking why a child saw a family member in an ad while playing a game. The Congressman just held up an iPhone while asking but it had nothing to do with the hardware. Of course there are numerous factors that may have contributed to the ad (and maybe Google wasn't involved) but they went with the smartass answer and the media ran with that narrative instead. It's not the grea…

How does this happen two different comments about one incident captured on video.

[deleted]

Re: Google says it doesn't monopolize digital ad market – senators don't buy it

#176

Post by [deleted] »

ardy42 wrote: post #99
doukdouk wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Words get abused a lot, and for some of them, they do not have a clear-cut, universally agreed upon meaning. "Monopoly" is one of such words (others candidate include: freedom, democracy, justice). When random person X complains about, say, Google having a monopoly, there are two possibilities: - Person X means something along "Google has a dominant market position and abuses its power", slightly abusing the meaning…

> Somehow a lot of people choose to believe interpretation #2 is true, and spend a lot of time debating whether this or that company is a "monopoly" as if it is somehow more important than the substantive issues Not to accuse anyone here of this, but intentionally doing what you describe is an disingenuous but effective way of shaping the conversation to discourage scrutiny of more general kinds of anti-competitive b…

[deleted]

Re: Google says it doesn't monopolize digital ad market – senators don't buy it

#177

Post by IncRnd »

treis wrote: post #131
speeder wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am the CMO for a company. Google is the ONLY ad provider that give results, all others don't even get any clicks. How that is not a monopoly on the classic definition? Every time Google has a bug and screw with my ads, the revenue of the company I work for tanks hard, and I am yet to find any solution for it.

That depends heavily on your industry and obviously isnt true as a rule. Google gets 37% of ad spend, Facebook ~20% and then everyone else combines for the last 40%. It's true that if your looking at targeting users searching for something that it's basically just Google. But people are increasingly using apps and specific sites over general surfing. Reddit, tiktok, snap, etc. all have their own ads and collectively…

In our tests, we get results from Google but ads on Facebook produce trash results.

Re: Google says it doesn't monopolize digital ad market – senators don't buy it

#178

Post by bjo590 »

mhh__ wrote: post #28
rch wrote: post #15

My impressession is that politicians prefer Facebook over Google.

Google don't seem to be as interested in playing the game as facebook.

They are all playing the same game, but the niches they found success force them to play differently. Google tried to take over fb.com with g+. FB tried to attack android with fb phones. They both are fighting over direct direct messaging with Hangouts/messenger/whatsapp. There is just as much politics in Youtube as there is in Facebook.

Re: Google says it doesn't monopolize digital ad market – senators don't buy it

#179

Post by IncRnd »

Aunche wrote: post #128
throwaway_kufu wrote: post #66

What so many people fail to realize about these issues vis-a-vis Google, it’s not so much the issues of Google having a monopoly or not on the ad market...in either case google is a dominant market incumbent that uses its position (in this case web traffic, data and online ad platform) to unfairly compete and stifle competition. Google has often used data acquired through their market position to start subsidiaries t…

> google subsidiary gets a custom tool at the top of google results (such as Flights) above both organic and ads. Searching for flights is still a search. You wouldn't expect the first result of "cat pictures" to be Bing's search results for cat pictures, so it's also natural that the first result of "flight nyc la" would return actual flights as its first result would return actual flights rather than a link to Expe…

That is illegal under antitrust laws.

Google was fined billions of euros for doing that.

Re: Google says it doesn't monopolize digital ad market – senators don't buy it

#180

Post by squeaky-clean »

blhack wrote: post #161
squeaky-clean wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strong disagree, it's a terrible question, most likely not entirely factual, and there's no reason to dignify it with an in depth answer as it would require breaking down multiple company's ad ecosystems for one question. You're re-interpreting the question as something he didn't actually say. The question, as it is in the official record is "how does that show up on a 7 year old's iPhone". > Senator, ad providers ha…

Let's look at the possible interpretations of the officially recorded question and see if we can figure out what the congressman meant. Question: "how does this show up on a 7 year olds iPhone". Interpretation 1: >"How does this show up on a 7 year olds iPhone" Senator, the iphone has a component on the front of it called an LED screen. LED stands for "light emitting diode", and the screen itself, which is similar in…

> possible interpretations of the officially recorded question and see if we can figure out what the congressman meant.

This is not how things work legally. If they want better answers they need better questions. It's not about interpreting what they meant but never actually said. Especially when what they said it accusatory of Google and very likely false. He asked a terrible question, and you're bending over backwards to interpret it in the most charitable way possible. That's fine on HN, or in a group of friends. That is not how things work at a congressional hearing. If I was Sundar, my answer would be that without photographic proof I don't believe this ever actually happened.

Cheers to whomever is downvoting my responses. It doesn't change the fact that it was a bad question and it got a deservedly snarky answer. I'm leaving this thread, it's clear most people here don't want to understand ads and just want to be angry at the big corp.

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