Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

tilvids.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 856 posts

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

#111

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

Some people, besides the ones who read HN, believe the success of online advertising service providers, including so-called "Big Tech" and "adtech", is based on fraud. Please distinguish the success of online advertising service providers, e.g., Google, versus the success of online advertisers, e.g., Joe's Pizza.

One example is Bob Hoffman. Hoffman is an ad industry veteran who suggests that despite all the advances in computing, advertising has gotten worse, not better. That is, ads today are, for various reasons, less effective at creating brands than in the past. (If so, then one might ask "Why pay for them?" There are multiple answers, none of them satisfactory. IMHO. Yours may differ.)

https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B007W8R8H6/about

https://www.bobhoffmanswebsite.com

https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/171361.Bob_Hoffman

https://www.marketingsociety.com/the-library/bob-hoffman-ind...

https://the-media-leader.com/making-sense-of-it-all-bob-hoff...

https://www.amazon.com/ADSCAM-Advertising-Historys-Greatest-...

https://www.amazon.com/Advertising-Skeptics-Bob-Hoffman/dp/0...

https://podcasts.marketingsociety.com/episode/dave-dye-talks...

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/businessofstory/BOB_HOFFMA...

https://www.moreaboutadvertising.com/2023/01/ad-contrarian-b...

https://stoppress.co.nz/stoppress-series/features/a-qa-with-...

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

#112

Post by timmg »

Gigachad wrote: post #106
jhaenchen wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real issue IMO is that users do not understand that ads pay for their apps. They don't want to see ads and the ads they do see they want them to be uninformed and general. They want everything free. This just encourages subscriptions. Which we're seeing become more and more common.

Everyone understands that ads pay for sites. You can want something for free while still understanding how adverts work.

Honest question: how can you expect stuff for free without ads?

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

#113

Post by mustacheemperor »

makeitdouble wrote: post #25
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…

What examples of ad based rising companies do you see ? My first thought was Google, and it's started to plateau in the recent years: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/GOOGL/alphabet/rev... . Meta also took a dive, and while it was from a sharp turn of the business focus, I'd argue it comes from an attempt to avoid staying on a stagnating market.

YouTube has its own internal micro economy of channels, networks of channels, etc that is thriving from ad revenue. Binging with Babish was “a guy cooking food from tv” a few years ago and is now an entire platform of channels. I think those companies can all be considered separately from the operator of the marketplace.

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

#114

Post by sclarisse »

brewdad wrote: post #21
phaedrus wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The YouTube channel Second Thought recently put out a video ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gSzzuY1Yw0 ) whose thesis was that even being cheaper than fossil fuels is not / will not be enough for green energy to win, because under capitalism a cheap thing that also has low profit margin will not attract investment compared to a bit more expensive thing which can be exploited for more profit. I wonder if a similar…

Your coworker is wise. Economic theory holds that in a truly efficient market, profits approach 0.

That’s economic profits that approach 0. You can still run an accounting profit, it’s just not bigger than it would be if you invested your money somewhere else, like land or mining or coffeeshops or whatever.

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

#115

Post by ndriscoll »

phaedrus wrote: post #17
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…

The YouTube channel Second Thought recently put out a video ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gSzzuY1Yw0 ) whose thesis was that even being cheaper than fossil fuels is not / will not be enough for green energy to win, because under capitalism a cheap thing that also has low profit margin will not attract investment compared to a bit more expensive thing which can be exploited for more profit. I wonder if a similar…

That video makes no sense. If renewables are cheaper, then fossil fuels have even worse margins. The video claims for some reason that fossil fuels are "more exploitable" and more profitable, but assuming you're baking storage into cost, a lot of energy is fungible. Furthermore, solar can easily be installed on prem and many energy users have plenty of unused roof space, so even if all energy providers conspired to keep energy prices high, energy users can install their own solar.

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

#116

Post by tensor »

ravenstine wrote: post #10

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 ti…

Those of us who remember when Google first started might even remember that part of it's early success was precisely that it didn't have tons of banner ads like the search engines that came before it. In no way was it the first to prove that "ads could work", the ad-driven model was already bananas before it came out.

It's only much later that Google went full on awful ads. Few and unobtrusive ads were a huge early selling point for Google.

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

#117

Post by federalemployee »

baron816 wrote: post #9

I think we really need microtransactions. Pay $0.05 to read this article? Sure. Whoever figures out the infrastructure for that (seems like it would be right up Stripe’s alley) is going to make trillions.

This is one thing Ted Nelson was hung up on. It’s tough to solve.

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

#118

Post by YetAnotherNick »

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…

Even the pre Apollo saga, reddit ad revenue was nowhere close to facebook. Same with twitter, before Musk its ad revenue is not good. And both platforms are now trying to emulate facebook with heavy control on the app and the API.

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

#120

Post by [deleted] »

bamfly wrote: post #94
lacrimacida wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha, what is a superapp?

AOL but in the 21st century. Possibly minus the ISP part. All the shit you do on the web, but controlled by one company, in their app, so they can rent-seek the hell out of everyone else's business.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN