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

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101–110 of 160 posts

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

#101
post #70

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…

for revenue to drop because of that, people have to massively have moved to some other way to search for things. What would that currently be?

What is the proportion of ads revenue is generated from search compared to maps, youtube and their other sources?

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

#102
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

They can but it’s pretty rare for them to do anything about it (and even then it’s normally just a full page div that’s easy to remove with dev tools).

I use nextdns (because I was too lazy to setup pi-hole), which has a simple ui for whitelisting domains as and when I can’t get around one (though usually it’s down to a tracking script breaking a site when it fails to load).

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

#103

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…

YouTube ads have gotten vey scummy too. A lot of get rich or get fit ads though I just listen to music or lectures there. And it seems common for others and now people have learned to avoid YouTube ads.

This is usually a sign of advertiser flight. Usually big reputable brands are easily the top bidders getting their ads shown, and in the absence of those, the much lower bidding scams can get through.

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

#104
post #15

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…

> support the content creator

Do realize that unless the content creator is in the YouTube Partner Program, clicking on the ad does not support them at all, you only waste your time making Google more money.

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

#105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

for revenue to drop because of that, people have to massively have moved to some other way to search for things. What would that currently be?

What is the proportion of ads revenue is generated from search compared to maps, youtube and their other sources?

It's in the article:

$42.6 billion from search

$8.5 billion from other ads marketplace products (maps, shopping, display)

$7.96 billion from YouTube

$7.3 billion from GCP

$76 billion total

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

#106
post #21

> On Thursday, the company posted its fourth consecutive decline in profit as it grapples with a slowdown in digital advertising. Layoffs as a means of cost reduction to stem the tide seems very rational.

Shouldn't they instead punish those who inadequately planned for this?

yup. People make it sound like it's impossible to predict the market. On the other hand, what is the logic in overhiring - we expect search revenue (bulk of the revenue) to spike in the next few years, so we will hire 50,000 more engineers to... do what? build more search that's already built? and if things don't work out, we'll just get rid of them?

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

#107
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

No, DNS sinkholes silently replace queries by a valid internal IP - to JavaScript, it looks like the resource is loading, but the webbrowser actually just displays whitespace instead of the app. Check for example this page [1] - if you run AdBlock, it will be detected. My page just looks void of Ads with pfblockerng [2]. It works inside Apps (Android etc.) and games or youtube videos, too. There are ways to get aroun…

So it's incredibly easy to detect.

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

#108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, DNS sinkholes silently replace queries by a valid internal IP - to JavaScript, it looks like the resource is loading, but the webbrowser actually just displays whitespace instead of the app. Check for example this page [1] - if you run AdBlock, it will be detected. My page just looks void of Ads with pfblockerng [2]. It works inside Apps (Android etc.) and games or youtube videos, too. There are ways to get aroun…

So it's incredibly easy to detect.

Care to explain? Give me an address that runs an anti-ad-blocker and I show you it won't work.

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

#109
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I basically just search Reddit now, using Google.

Interesting, I specifically do that in order to get a general feeling of what people think of a topic. Reddit is moderated and curated. Makes sense that it’s often more useful than say, SEO spam. However please note that there’s a ton of advertising hidden in sheep’s skin.

Thanks, yeah I don't necessarily take it as "the word", but honestly, it's good to as you said, "gauge things", and there's a lot of human experience documented on Reddit ha

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

#110
post #70

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…

for revenue to drop because of that, people have to massively have moved to some other way to search for things. What would that currently be?

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