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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

#131

Post by rdsubhas »

AlbertCory wrote: post #57
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 was in Google Ads 2008-10, and people from outside the company always said, "Oh, I never click on ads!" To which I responded, "Well, someone does, or we wouldn't have all this free food." There's a simple test of your hypothesis, which they can do easily inside Google but it's harder to do from outside: has CTR gone down over the years?

You cannot expand the mouth of the funnel (grow the market) and keep conversion static at the same time.

Maybe something like rate of change of CTR is stable relative to the rate of change of traffic.

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

#132

Post by Helmut10001 »

Thorrez wrote: post #129
Helmut10001 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Requests to ad domains don't take longer - they're faster, since 0.0.0.0 (the sinkhole) will answer the query, instead of some internet Ad IP.

Then the request will fail right, since the https cert doesn't match? Or are you installing a custom root CA? Loading faster is also probably detectable, especially if there's some request that the server intentionally replies slowly to to aid detection.

You're right, in this case the https will fail and this will indeed (mostly) slow down loading of Ads. I was wrong - although, personally, I do not observe slower loading times for pages, even though some ad-urls are failing. There are indeed some very rare pages (like zdf.de) that won't load at all because they have a very aggressive ad/surveillance checking.

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

#133

Post by blitzar »

AlbertCory wrote: post #57
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 was in Google Ads 2008-10, and people from outside the company always said, "Oh, I never click on ads!" To which I responded, "Well, someone does, or we wouldn't have all this free food." There's a simple test of your hypothesis, which they can do easily inside Google but it's harder to do from outside: has CTR gone down over the years?

CTR are and always have been comically small - its like spam and scam calls - a pure (big) numbers game.

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

#134

Post by tarsinge »

dgb23 wrote: post #89
bamboozled wrote: post #73

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.

One caveat is that you have to pay attention on which subreddit you are to be sure you get a real variety of opinion and are just not in an echo chamber with bot parroting the current "wisdom" of that sub to farm karma. I've seen a lot of small subreddits make full 180 regarding a product or practice after a few months / years when the hype is gone.

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

#135

Post by tsss »

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 intentionally click on Google Image ads quite often. When you're looking for furniture or art they're quite relevant.

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

#136

Post by FpUser »

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…

>" have never intentionally clicked on a Google/YouTube/etc ad"

Same here

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

#137

Post by jemmyw »

I_AM_A_SMURF wrote: post #25
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 think your bubble might be very tech heavy. My wife (a millennial) and her friends buy things from ads All. The. Time.

What do they buy?

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

#138

Post by trieste92 »

I_AM_A_SMURF wrote: post #25
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 think your bubble might be very tech heavy. My wife (a millennial) and her friends buy things from ads All. The. Time.

This. Gen Z's I know will buy random shit like shoes or phone cases off of Instagram

Me personally? Seeing something on Instagram is enough of a reason for me to never buy it. Same for influencers telling me to buy something, I'd rather they eat shit

But for ads that get interleaved with organic Amazon results, a lot of these are harder to spot (and also more innocuous imo)

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

#139

Post by trieste92 »

locusofself wrote: post #49
pprotas wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am with you here. It is baffling to me how there are people using the internet without an adblocker on every device!

almost every website has a paywall now that detects adblockers and nags you. the number of distinct websites I regularly visit has dwindled drastically. If Im not on reddit/HN or reading documentation, I pretty much stick to the few sites I have subscriptions to.

Sounds like the adblocker isn't good enough

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

#140

Post by jemmyw »

abandonliberty wrote: post #34
shrubble wrote: post #13

It couldn't possibly be because the google search engine produces pretty bad results these days, could it?

Is there a better alternative? I keep putting !g into ddg. Maybe the old internet is dying and everyone is moving to the winners. Facebook, Amazon, Tiktok, snap, etc. Who needs the internet anymore? Will all the cool people leave so we can have it back?

I've been using kagi a paid search service. It's good, better than ddg. It doesn't have ads and the results are better for my location, I don't have to add "NZ" to every query to get the NZ sites at the top, which I do with Google, even though it knows my location.
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