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Instagram to increase ad load as Meta fights revenue decline

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Re: Instagram to increase ad load as Meta fights revenue decline

#91

Post by BobbyJo »

foobarian wrote: post #61
datadata wrote: post #54

It seems so obvious to us that this is a short term win at the expense of the long term. I wonder if data driven companies like this are locked into local minimums via tons of short term optimizations to boost metrics. In optimization algorithms like stochastic gradient descent, some form of entropy (crucially temporarily decreasing fitness) or exploration (having parallel evaluations of the fitness function) is nece…

The mechanism is called Visionary CEO and good luck with that.

Specifically, Mark has allowed Facebooks mission to change from "giving people the power to build community and bring the world closer together" to "optimize ad revenue from a pre-existing group of users", and is now doing the same to Instagram. Look at the changes made to Facebook in the last five years and tell me, with a straight face, that they were all made with the original mission statement in mind.

A Visionary CEO would chase the mission and expect revenue to follow.

Re: Instagram to increase ad load as Meta fights revenue decline

#92

Post by Ancalagon »

Is it just me, or is Instagram losing lots of organic traffic just the same way Facebook did? I'm not sure if its the algorithm that changed, but now posts from weeks ago are showing up at the top of my feed. The ads are not as invasive (yet) at least.

Re: Instagram to increase ad load as Meta fights revenue decline

#93

Post by wlesieutre »

criddell wrote: post #76
ReaLNero wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this are locked into local minimum Merely having statistics won't lead you to local optima, it's the incentive structure. Public companies need to have a positive second derivative on their revenue, which trickles down to PMs and directors doing anything in their power to improve the quarterly numbers at long-term costs.

> Public companies need to have a positive second derivative on their revenue I don't think that's true. In fact I don't think very many public companies have accelerating revenue.

Yeah that's more of a startup mentality where you're trying to prove to your next round of investors that your growth is going to be 10x then 100x then 1000x and will then eat an entire industry. If someone's buying Meta stock at this point it's pretty obviously not on an infinite growth trajectory.

Re: Instagram to increase ad load as Meta fights revenue decline

#94

Post by floor2 »

datadata wrote: post #54

It seems so obvious to us that this is a short term win at the expense of the long term. I wonder if data driven companies like this are locked into local minimums via tons of short term optimizations to boost metrics. In optimization algorithms like stochastic gradient descent, some form of entropy (crucially temporarily decreasing fitness) or exploration (having parallel evaluations of the fitness function) is nece…

It takes a better alternative for people to change though.

Spotify is borderline unusable to me now, it's about 50/50 ads/songs. But I still haven't uninstalled it. I think my usage is now something like, after listening to 5 songs and 5 ads, I get frustrated and switch to a podcast. But, I don't know of any alternative with less ads that works on my phone, so I'm still a user (despite listening for an hour a week instead of 40 hours a week).

The current internet media giants got huge by burning VC money for years to operate with few or no ads, and now Insta/Youtube/Spotify are all basically as bad as broadcast TV and radio for ad density. But is anyone going to give a new upstart a billion dollars and 5 years to host ad-free content to establish a new competitor?

Re: Instagram to increase ad load as Meta fights revenue decline

#95

Post by jcfrei »

barbazoo wrote: post #80
jcfrei wrote: post #39

The rise and fall of all social networks is inevitable. Like many things they follow this dynamic where they go out of fashion when too many use it. Currently everybody is moving to TikTok and there's lots of good content there. But that platform too will fade eventually and another one appear.

Is there some precedent of this from the past? I haven't heard of this "rule".

The social platform where young people spent most of their time kept changing in the past - I think it went something like this: Netlog > Facebook > Instagram > TikTok. There have been lots of other social networks that have been popular at some point and then eventually declined or even disappeared: Google+, Snapchat, Vine, StudiVZ (German speaking countries), the list goes on...

Re: Instagram to increase ad load as Meta fights revenue decline

#97

Post by bombcar »

wlesieutre wrote: post #93
criddell wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Public companies need to have a positive second derivative on their revenue I don't think that's true. In fact I don't think very many public companies have accelerating revenue.

Yeah that's more of a startup mentality where you're trying to prove to your next round of investors that your growth is going to be 10x then 100x then 1000x and will then eat an entire industry. If someone's buying Meta stock at this point it's pretty obviously not on an infinite growth trajectory.

I suspect they're still pretending it has growth left; once it's clear that they DO NOT have much growth left, the stock will slowly settle to a "reasonable" p/e. Or suddenly plummet to one, who knows.

Re: Instagram to increase ad load as Meta fights revenue decline

#98

Post by KptMarchewa »

BobbyJo wrote: post #91
foobarian wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mechanism is called Visionary CEO and good luck with that.

Specifically, Mark has allowed Facebooks mission to change from "giving people the power to build community and bring the world closer together" to "optimize ad revenue from a pre-existing group of users", and is now doing the same to Instagram. Look at the changes made to Facebook in the last five years and tell me, with a straight face, that they were all made with the original mission statement in mind. A Visionar…

>"giving people the power to build community and bring the world closer together"

If that was ever the case. In words of Mark Zuckerberg "dumb fucks".

Re: Instagram to increase ad load as Meta fights revenue decline

#100

Post by tmpz22 »

rchaud wrote: post #73
datadata wrote: post #54

It seems so obvious to us that this is a short term win at the expense of the long term. I wonder if data driven companies like this are locked into local minimums via tons of short term optimizations to boost metrics. In optimization algorithms like stochastic gradient descent, some form of entropy (crucially temporarily decreasing fitness) or exploration (having parallel evaluations of the fitness function) is nece…

There is no long term for IG or FB as we know it. MetaVR and MetaAI is what those companies will become. All IG/FB can do now is squeeze as much ad revenue as possible while there are still hundreds of millions using it daily.

My mom still uses facebook a lot. It sucks to think that an older retiree is now caught up in this cycle.
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