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Alphabet’s Profit Falls 34% (fourth consecutive drop) Amid Ads Slowdown

nytimes.com

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Re: Alphabet’s Profit Falls 34% (fourth consecutive drop) Amid Ads Slowdown

#61

Post by JoshTriplett »

petesergeant wrote: post #59
loveparade wrote: post #5

The fact that the ad model has worked so well is always a nice reminder of how much of a bubble I live in. Personally I have never intentionally clicked on a Google/YouTube/etc ad. Never. I wonder if the general population has been getting more tech-savvy and skeptical of ads over time, but this change takes a very long time to play out. I sometimes see my dad clicking on ads because he doesn't understand the mechani…

I am tech savvy and run ad blockers on all my devices. However I consume Instagram through an app, and can’t be arsed setting up an ad blocker that would deal with that. I have bought a whole bunch of stuff through Instagram ads. I see too many ads on Instagram, but not enough to make me stop using it, and the ads are apparently relevant enough. I assume this is a large reason why websites are so keen for you to use…

I've been so much happier with YouTube when I removed the Android app and replaced it with an icon on my home screen that goes to https://m.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions in Firefox (with uBlock Origin). Works perfectly.

Re: Alphabet’s Profit Falls 34% (fourth consecutive drop) Amid Ads Slowdown

#62

Post by lmm »

andsoitis wrote: post #26
carabiner wrote: post #18

What is the chance that adtech is all a house of cards? Meaning that all of the "precision targeting" for segmenting married men over 30 who speak German and English while having house cats doesn't work at all? For a while, I was getting ads on Instagram in Spanish, and I don't speak Spanish.

If someone clicks on an ad, don’t you think it is because it resonated with them? Even from first principles, it stands to reason that the more precisely you can craft a message (e.g. an ad) for your audience, the higher the chances that it would resonate, and be something you can monetize.

Maybe. Or maybe there's an uncanny valley effect where overly personal ads seem intrusive, and something that plainly describes the product will appeal more. Even if there is an improvement, is it a big enough improvement to be worth paying for?

Re: Alphabet’s Profit Falls 34% (fourth consecutive drop) Amid Ads Slowdown

#63

Post by Thorrez »

Helmut10001 wrote: post #60
petesergeant wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am tech savvy and run ad blockers on all my devices. However I consume Instagram through an app, and can’t be arsed setting up an ad blocker that would deal with that. I have bought a whole bunch of stuff through Instagram ads. I see too many ads on Instagram, but not enough to make me stop using it, and the ads are apparently relevant enough. I assume this is a large reason why websites are so keen for you to use…

I run an ad blocker centrally on my router (pfSense with pfblockerng on an APU2.D4), which has an automatically updated list of all known ad servers worldwide, directing traffic for those into a DNS sink. No device configuration needed. Cannot be detected by websites.

Couldn't JavaScript on the page notice that ads aren't loading?

Re: Alphabet’s Profit Falls 34% (fourth consecutive drop) Amid Ads Slowdown

#64

Post by DeRock »

HWR_14 wrote: post #41

How did Meta do so well and Alphabet do so poorly on revenue?

They didn’t? Metas revenue was down year over year for the latest quarter, whereas googles grew. Net income for the same quarter was down 55% for meta, as compared to down 34% for google (the headline of the featured article you are commenting on).

Re: Alphabet’s Profit Falls 34% (fourth consecutive drop) Amid Ads Slowdown

#65

Post by _boffin_ »

jliptzin wrote: post #55
drewbitt wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I don’t like a company but have to visit their site, I’ll click on their Google ad that often appears and cost them the $1. Particularly if I’m using my work machine

But what do you do if you also don’t like google?

give Microsoft, Yandex, Bidu, yahoo, or someone else the ad revenue...?

Re: Alphabet’s Profit Falls 34% (fourth consecutive drop) Amid Ads Slowdown

#66

Post by petesergeant »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #61
petesergeant wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am tech savvy and run ad blockers on all my devices. However I consume Instagram through an app, and can’t be arsed setting up an ad blocker that would deal with that. I have bought a whole bunch of stuff through Instagram ads. I see too many ads on Instagram, but not enough to make me stop using it, and the ads are apparently relevant enough. I assume this is a large reason why websites are so keen for you to use…

I've been so much happier with YouTube when I removed the Android app and replaced it with an icon on my home screen that goes to https://m.youtube.com/feed/subscriptions in Firefox (with uBlock Origin). Works perfectly.

I do the same thing with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Reddit, which has the added advantage of trashing the experience a bit so I use them much less.

Instagram doesn’t really work outside of the app for me though

Re: Alphabet’s Profit Falls 34% (fourth consecutive drop) Amid Ads Slowdown

#67

Post by petesergeant »

Helmut10001 wrote: post #60
petesergeant wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am tech savvy and run ad blockers on all my devices. However I consume Instagram through an app, and can’t be arsed setting up an ad blocker that would deal with that. I have bought a whole bunch of stuff through Instagram ads. I see too many ads on Instagram, but not enough to make me stop using it, and the ads are apparently relevant enough. I assume this is a large reason why websites are so keen for you to use…

I run an ad blocker centrally on my router (pfSense with pfblockerng on an APU2.D4), which has an automatically updated list of all known ad servers worldwide, directing traffic for those into a DNS sink. No device configuration needed. Cannot be detected by websites.

Enough non-ad stuff breaks for me using a browser-based blocker that I’m not sure it’s worth the hassle for me, to block ads only on Instagram, especially as I do occasionally buy stuff

Re: Alphabet’s Profit Falls 34% (fourth consecutive drop) Amid Ads Slowdown

#68

Post by wwweston »

qilo wrote: post #15
loveparade wrote: post #5

The fact that the ad model has worked so well is always a nice reminder of how much of a bubble I live in. Personally I have never intentionally clicked on a Google/YouTube/etc ad. Never. I wonder if the general population has been getting more tech-savvy and skeptical of ads over time, but this change takes a very long time to play out. I sometimes see my dad clicking on ads because he doesn't understand the mechani…

I'm clicking somewhat often on youtube ads, because there's no way to escape them without the content blocker, so you have to watch the ad anyway. So if I have to wait anyway until the ad ends, I just waste aditional click. But I never buy anything nor have any interest in the advertised product. I do this mainly for 2 reasons: - waste the budget of annoying/scam ads in hope that in the future I'll see less of those…

> there's no way to escape them without the content blocker

You can pay for the service, which supports it and the content creators, plus you get a few extra goodies.

I started doing it about a year ago for the "play in background" feature, but the no-ads thing has been nice.

Re: Alphabet’s Profit Falls 34% (fourth consecutive drop) Amid Ads Slowdown

#69

Post by babyshake »

loveparade wrote: post #5

The fact that the ad model has worked so well is always a nice reminder of how much of a bubble I live in. Personally I have never intentionally clicked on a Google/YouTube/etc ad. Never. I wonder if the general population has been getting more tech-savvy and skeptical of ads over time, but this change takes a very long time to play out. I sometimes see my dad clicking on ads because he doesn't understand the mechani…

I click on search ads sometimes, but it's only when it happens to be the same result that I'm already looking for and it saves me an extra second finding that same result below. This doesn't seem to be very valuable to the advertiser, but I'm sure preventing me from getting distracted or persuaded by another result in that next second has some value.

Re: Alphabet’s Profit Falls 34% (fourth consecutive drop) Amid Ads Slowdown

#70

Post by harry8 »

In other news Google's search continues to get worse at finding what you want. Randomly dropping words from your query, even when you quote them and + and allintext, even when they claim they haven't ctrl+f shows the word ain't in the result.

They just want to get the easy money of you clicking the ad for $someco that they put in before the "i'm feeling lucky" spot where $someco should be.

Want to find something you know you read a couple of months ago and recall a lot of details about? Good luck. Not sure what the best search engine is for that but it seems it is no longer google.

Are these twin declines, service quality and revenue somehow causally related? If so in which direction?

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