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The ad-based internet is dying, and it's getting worse in the process [video]

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Re: The ad-based internet is dying, and it's getting worse in the process [video]

#3

Post by constantly »

I hope I won’t be faulted for not “reading” the OP, but it’s a 17 minute video. I watched a little, but I don’t understand the thesis.

It does seem ironic though that on a video about the ad-based internet dying, there are several ads in the page, the video maker in the first segment has a lengthy ad where he praises whatever he is advertising, probably VPN stuff, there is a bunch of begging for paid subscribers in the summary, and comments in the comment section from third party ad spammers directing people to what appears to be MLMs.

Re: The ad-based internet is dying, and it's getting worse in the process [video]

#4

Post by mschuster91 »

It's gotta be ironic that the most recent comment on a video about ads is some spam advertising a get-rich-quick scheme.

The sad fact is that there still seem to be more than enough utterly braindead marks on the Internet that fall for these scams and thus make the spam campaigns, scare ads and other crap "worth the effort".

Re: The ad-based internet is dying, and it's getting worse in the process [video]

#5

Post by gleenn »

His two examples are Twitter and Reddit whose ad revenue is dying because those two companies have made huge blunders. Elon seems to almost actively be killing Twitter (which the poster even states). Reddit screwed Apollo and then many of the most popular subreddits protested and did things like show porn on otherwise usually SFW content to prevent Reddit from showing ads and thus killing their profits. Those are big sites, but those are definitely attributable to other obvious confounding factors. I would definitely argue they should be the first data points thrown out in asking "is the ad biz on the internet dying?". I do think ads have gotten worse but I definitely don't think it's going anywhere for a long long time. Way too many companies have built their whole revenue model around them. And companies may spend less to post ads but they definitely still will because there really aren't that many alternatives.

Re: The ad-based internet is dying, and it's getting worse in the process [video]

#7

Post by RajT88 »

constantly wrote: post #3

I hope I won’t be faulted for not “reading” the OP, but it’s a 17 minute video. I watched a little, but I don’t understand the thesis. It does seem ironic though that on a video about the ad-based internet dying, there are several ads in the page, the video maker in the first segment has a lengthy ad where he praises whatever he is advertising, probably VPN stuff, there is a bunch of begging for paid subscribers in t…

I look forward to a future where these videos can get auto-transcribed (accurately) so I don't have to watch the damn video.

Re: The ad-based internet is dying, and it's getting worse in the process [video]

#8

Post by woooooo »

gleenn wrote: post #5

His two examples are Twitter and Reddit whose ad revenue is dying because those two companies have made huge blunders. Elon seems to almost actively be killing Twitter (which the poster even states). Reddit screwed Apollo and then many of the most popular subreddits protested and did things like show porn on otherwise usually SFW content to prevent Reddit from showing ads and thus killing their profits. Those are big…

I recently googled some random topic (drag race engines I think) and got some fairly-decent article from 5 years ago that satisfied my curiosity.

The website was actively user-hostile. Multiple things popping up all over the place, the works.

Is there any other destiny for content like that? Long since written, but owned and served. Why not enshittify as much as possible, one performance review cycle at a time?

Re: The ad-based internet is dying, and it's getting worse in the process [video]

#10

Post by ravenstine »

This guy's conception of The Google's role in the history of the ad-based internet is totally out of touch, which is strange because he appears to be about as old as I am, maybe even a bit older than that.

The Google didn't prove that "ads could work" to make content free. They may have become a big player, if not the biggest player in the ad space, but the proliferation of ad-supported content had more to do with timing than anything else. YouTube was born at a time where video content embedded in webpages could actually work for most users (without downloading something like RealPlayer) and be scaled up. The Google simply bought this business because it was clear to most people that YouTube represented the future, and they had the cash to do it. Not only did they have that cash, but even more cash to throw at it to create their Buffetean moat. There's nothing genius about it. Before YouTube and even Web 2.0, there was not only plenty of free written content but there were other video sites, few if any had anything to do with The Google.

If anything, The Google is responsible for demolishing the ad-based internet. The quality control of their ads used to be so atrocious that of course people started ignoring most of them. Thus, traditional ads became nearly worthless. Their conclusion wasn't to turn away business from outright scams hawking B.S., but that people aren't clicking on ads because the ads aren't relevant to them! A good theory on paper, except it turns out people don't actually like feeling like they're being followed everywhere they go, and it also turns out that when they regularly buy Huggies diapers out of necessity, that doesn't mean they want to immediately see another 100 ads telling them to buy more Huggies.

All that said, I don't think ads have very much to do with the current decline in the quality of the web as a whole. The recent push to shove lots of ads in front of users, namely those that appear frequently within YouTube videos, is just a symptom of companies like The Google struggling to maintain growth when Silicon Valley isn't living life on the fast lane in Easy Street. There's also other factors like search engines failing to scale along with the web, as well as deranking or outright censorship; this is done both at the behest of advertisers but also to chase the widest possible audience.

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