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‘Your Map Is Wrong’

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Re: ‘Your Map Is Wrong’

#31

Post by naravara »

thematrixturtle wrote: post #17
seydor wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not even contestable. Google and FB took the advertising money from everyone else. Businesses still pay (and always have) the same % in advertising, only it's 2 monopolies now instead of thousands of media.

I'm no fan of ads, but I would still contest that. The pre-Internet advertising arsenal was all remarkably blunt weapons (newspaper ads, TV, radio, direct mail) that made targeting very difficult and were out of reach or not economic for countless businesses. Now anybody can buy precisely targeted impressions for any keyword under the sun and very closely track their performance, opening up entirely new markets.

> opening up entirely new markets.

Before deciding if "opening up new markets" is necessarily good we'd need to ask what kinds of markets it opened up. Most of what I see are content farms flooding search engines with SEO garbage, scammy businesses that sell poor knock-off products, and predatory ad tech. I'd prefer it if those markets had never been opened.

Re: ‘Your Map Is Wrong’

#32

Post by danaris »

yieldcrv wrote: post #16
chris_wot wrote: post #5

I’m curious why anyone takes inspiration from Zuckerberg.

Basically, when you are rich the same opinions you had when you were poor now matter. Its magic, like a superpower.

"And it won't make one bit of difference if I answer right or wrong—

When you're rich, they think you really know!"

~ Tevye, _Fiddler on the Roof_

Re: ‘Your Map Is Wrong’

#34

Post by naravara »

golergka wrote: post #14
seydor wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not even contestable. Google and FB took the advertising money from everyone else. Businesses still pay (and always have) the same % in advertising, only it's 2 monopolies now instead of thousands of media.

> Businesses still pay (and always have) the same % in advertising That's completely false. A lot of small businesses (think housewifes selling cupcakes) were not viable before Google and especially Facebook/Instagram — they simply could not realistically find their consumers before internet advertising.

There was a brief golden period where those housewives selling cupcakes had their moments in the sun. But at this point they're mostly outcompeted by AliExpress tier knock-offs of anything innovative they do or other VC backed would-be monopolists, like Grubhub and Yelp, outcompeting them for eyeballs with superior SEO and keyword targeting.

Almost none of the local restaurants near me even have their own websites anymore because they get no hits. Yelp, Google, and GrubHub/UberEats type sites have hollowed it all out.

Re: ‘Your Map Is Wrong’

#36

Post by golergka »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #22
golergka wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Businesses still pay (and always have) the same % in advertising That's completely false. A lot of small businesses (think housewifes selling cupcakes) were not viable before Google and especially Facebook/Instagram — they simply could not realistically find their consumers before internet advertising.

They could always post an ad in a local newspaper. Many people read those things before the proliferation of internet.

They could also use a lot of other advertisement methods, which were much less cost-effective and make their businesses unprofitable overall.

Re: ‘Your Map Is Wrong’

#37

Post by lesam »

seydor wrote: post #29
thematrixturtle wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm no fan of ads, but I would still contest that. The pre-Internet advertising arsenal was all remarkably blunt weapons (newspaper ads, TV, radio, direct mail) that made targeting very difficult and were out of reach or not economic for countless businesses. Now anybody can buy precisely targeted impressions for any keyword under the sun and very closely track their performance, opening up entirely new markets.

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Rachel-Soloveichik/publ... There is no such thing as 'blunt' or sharp weapon, the market shows that all advertising has some efficacy (around 1% but nobody knows how much precisely). Internet advertising did not increase overall consumption, thus it is not more effective than the sum of previous media. Anyway the biggest trick BigTech played was not that it hypnotized the masses,…

My model is advertising is roughly zero sum - there’s only so much disposable income for advertisers to chase.

So it doesn’t seem contradictory that overall consumption stayed constant while the advertising arms race advanced significantly.

Re: ‘Your Map Is Wrong’

#38

Post by ajsnigrutin »

golergka wrote: post #36
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could always post an ad in a local newspaper. Many people read those things before the proliferation of internet.

They could also use a lot of other advertisement methods, which were much less cost-effective and make their businesses unprofitable overall.

Most of those ads were free "back in my days" here.. you got a "postcard" in each of those magazines, and could post an ad (limited length, text only) for free... how do you thing people sold cars before the internet?

And yes, facebook is more cost effective, because people don't get paid for their data... if people got paid for viewing ads and having their data gathered (like they used to be, market research groups and all that), the cost would be a lot different.

Re: ‘Your Map Is Wrong’

#39

Post by mwexler »

cehrlich wrote: post #4

Zuckerberg is fundamentally right [1], and I think it's a good observation that many people fail to make. But I think it's companies other than Facebook/Meta that are creating the new value. [1] https://clickhole.com/heartbreaking-the-worst-person-you-kno...

While I may not agree with your primary conjecture, your link is so good that I will simply slowly nod. Nice share!

Re: ‘Your Map Is Wrong’

#40

Post by narag »

seydor wrote: post #29
thematrixturtle wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm no fan of ads, but I would still contest that. The pre-Internet advertising arsenal was all remarkably blunt weapons (newspaper ads, TV, radio, direct mail) that made targeting very difficult and were out of reach or not economic for countless businesses. Now anybody can buy precisely targeted impressions for any keyword under the sun and very closely track their performance, opening up entirely new markets.

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Rachel-Soloveichik/publ... There is no such thing as 'blunt' or sharp weapon, the market shows that all advertising has some efficacy (around 1% but nobody knows how much precisely). Internet advertising did not increase overall consumption, thus it is not more effective than the sum of previous media. Anyway the biggest trick BigTech played was not that it hypnotized the masses,…

Internet advertising did not increase overall consumption...

Genuine questions: how do we know that? how do we measure that?

My own anecdotical evidence is that I consume different things. Anyway, would more effective advertising increase overall consumption? I would expect that it increases consumption of specific, tailored, targetted in detriment of generic.

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