Earlier quoted context omitted.
That seems like fraud, especially if you were to do it at scale.
You won't want to know what AdNauseam does.
It's one thing to click ads. It's quite another to do it for a company you own stock in.
Alphabet Third Quarter 2021 Results [pdf]
61–70 of 145 posts
Re: Alphabet Third Quarter 2021 Results [pdf]
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
This isn't even close to being true.
It's not quite half a percent by most accounts of GWP, but it's around there.
0.5% of global GDP would be more reasonable, although a fraction is an odd way of writing it.
It also doesn't tell us much other than Google and Facebook are large companies with significant earnings. You can probably provide a similar percentage for VW/Toyota, Boeing/Airbus, Walmart/Amazon, or any other pair of large companies that are the leaders in their respective markets. Indeed, if you lumped the entire Fortune 500 together, they're probably make up a sizable portion (if not the majority) of world GDP.
Re: Alphabet Third Quarter 2021 Results [pdf]
#63Once more, I don't understand how advertising revenue keeps growing. Once people install ad blockers, they don't typically remove them. And ad-blockers keep growing. So who is actually seeing these ads? How can those numbers be going up ? I understand, intellectually, that not everyone thinks like me. But I don't fundamentally understand why people allow ads on their devices when they can prevent it. Then again, I do…
> Once people install ad blockers, they don't typically remove them. And ad-blockers keep growing
> don't fundamentally understand why people allow ads on their devices when they can prevent it
The market share of iOS also has increased a bit, and iOS does not allow ad blocking very easily. You have to configure some sorta DNS-based ad blocking, which is harder than the traditional desktop firefox/chrome adblockers to install.
Usage of computers has also shifted towards phone/tablet apps, away from desktop browsers... And ad-blocking in apps is hard to impossible compared to on desktops.
I'm not surprised people continue to see a lot of ads as we move from the web, where mature ad-blockers exist, to apps, where ad-blocking is harder and less mature.
Even very technical people usually don't bother with pi-hole and see ads in free android apps.
Oh, and also, there are occasionally cases of an ad-blocker removing itself somewhat, i.e. adblock plus used to be the go to recommendation for ad-blocking, but they started allowing google ads through in an update (https://adblockplus.org/en/acceptable-ads)... so maybe someone installed adblock plus because that's what they remembered from 10 years ago (and adblock plus has better SEO than ublock origin too), and thus still gets google ads now.
Re: Alphabet Third Quarter 2021 Results [pdf]
#64Alphabet + Facebook revenue now represents 1/2% of world GDP and still growing rapidly. Edit: possibly not quite but almost certainly 1/2% excluding China.
This isn't even close to being true.
World GDP is $80T. Google's run-rate is $240B revenue and Facebook's is $116B. That's $356B / $80T => 0.445%. Close enough for internet math.
Re: Alphabet Third Quarter 2021 Results [pdf]
#65I do not understand this financial books and lingo enough to understand this correctly so have to ask "Is google cloud business gone really down as compared to previous years? Am I reading this correctly?"
You're misunderstanding, the numbers show 4990 million in 2021 vs 3444 million in 2020.
Thanks for explaining.
Re: Alphabet Third Quarter 2021 Results [pdf]
#66I do not understand this financial books and lingo enough to understand this correctly so have to ask "Is google cloud business gone really down as compared to previous years? Am I reading this correctly?"
No.
Google Cloud Revenue went up from $3.4 billion for Q3 2020 to $4.9 billion for Q3 2021
Google Cloud operating losses went down from $1.1 billion in Q3 2020 to $640 million in Q3 2021. (Though it looks like this change is almost exactly accounted for by a change in depreciation expense due to revised estimate of the useful life of servers.)
So they are bringing in significantly more money through the front door with Cloud, though they are still losing money (either about the same or half as much, depending on how you look at it) on Cloud.
Re: Alphabet Third Quarter 2021 Results [pdf]
#67Once more, I don't understand how advertising revenue keeps growing. Once people install ad blockers, they don't typically remove them. And ad-blockers keep growing. So who is actually seeing these ads? How can those numbers be going up ? I understand, intellectually, that not everyone thinks like me. But I don't fundamentally understand why people allow ads on their devices when they can prevent it. Then again, I do…
Assuming Google has a good handle on click fraud and the growth is real: * Some % of people install adblockers, but that number doesn't grow that much. * There are more people being reached by advertising than ever before. 7.7 billion people in the world & still only about half are online. So overall the number of users they're reaching is growing even if they lose some to adblockers. * You currently have to install…
I manage near 1M$ in Google Ads per year and can tell you CPC is going up while impressions are stable.
Re: Alphabet Third Quarter 2021 Results [pdf]
#68Once more, I don't understand how advertising revenue keeps growing. Once people install ad blockers, they don't typically remove them. And ad-blockers keep growing. So who is actually seeing these ads? How can those numbers be going up ? I understand, intellectually, that not everyone thinks like me. But I don't fundamentally understand why people allow ads on their devices when they can prevent it. Then again, I do…
They can adjust Quality Score parameters or bid floors to increase the CPC and/or make ads look more like organic results to increase the ad CTR. Both will increase their earnings per pageview.
More auction participants mean higher bids.
Removing match types such as phrase, while automatically shifting phrase to broad modified helps increase their fill rate & number of participants per auction.
Eliminating second price proxy auctions in display ads (search likely soon to follow?) will likely yield measurable increases in CPC.
A few years back they went from up to 10 ads to 7 on most-- they have that dial to adjust if necessary.
Products like Google Shopping take up more and more space on the SERPs and are typically pay to play. They have higher CTR due to carousel images & once you click into that ecosystem, nearly every click yields ad revenue.
Chrome behavior with URLs is conditioning users to search for brands (versus typing in the full domain name), who then have to pay to defend their brand terms from brand poachers.
Re: Alphabet Third Quarter 2021 Results [pdf]
#69Once more, I don't understand how advertising revenue keeps growing. Once people install ad blockers, they don't typically remove them. And ad-blockers keep growing. So who is actually seeing these ads? How can those numbers be going up ? I understand, intellectually, that not everyone thinks like me. But I don't fundamentally understand why people allow ads on their devices when they can prevent it. Then again, I do…
1. More people are getting on the internet all the time, especially new markets like India (who likely don't use ad blockers).
2. We're still early internet, and people rely on the internet more and more (and therefore search more). E.g. in Covid, people are likely transitioning more of their life online, which is good for Google.
3. As companies and the broader economy do better, companies will invest more in growing themselves, often by buying more ads. Companies are doing very well right now (see stock market), so there are more ads being bought AND the price per ad will likely go up because there is more competition.
4. There is still plenty of untapped ad real estate for Google to monetize as well (searches that could generate ad revenue, and web pages that can surface better ads).
This combination is great for Google.
Re: Alphabet Third Quarter 2021 Results [pdf]
#70Once more, I don't understand how advertising revenue keeps growing. Once people install ad blockers, they don't typically remove them. And ad-blockers keep growing. So who is actually seeing these ads? How can those numbers be going up ? I understand, intellectually, that not everyone thinks like me. But I don't fundamentally understand why people allow ads on their devices when they can prevent it. Then again, I do…
1. There's a sizable amount of budget in a process of migrating away from offline advertising market, partially thanks to COVID. This increases auction competition.
2. Online advertising still have a room for better optimization in many ways. You'll be surprised on how primitive bidding systems are for a large fraction of advertisers. Better bidding means ads more likely to convert.
Also note that HN readers are extreme outliers compared to usual people who actually spend money on ads. My gut feeling is that perhaps >90% of people don't care much about whether it's ads or not if it seems relevant enough for them.