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The Digital Advertising Duopoly
- IBM 9y ago>I don’t want nor do I expect any governmental response to this market failure. You should want it and it's weird not to expect it because the EU has already begun.
- nerdponx 9y agoIsn't that the role of governments in a healthy economy? To step in when markets fail?
- alexryan 9y agoThis is where all corruption originates. One group seeks to use the state to impose their will on another group. The victimized group, in turn, seeks to defend itself by bribing the enforcers. Instead of capital flowing to those who are best able to convert it into the most happiness for the most people, it flows to those seeking to enrich themselves by pitting people against each other in order to extract ever larger bribes. The state grows ever more corrupt in this fashion. It might be wise to refrain from the impulse to use force long enough to consider alternative ways to remedy the perceived problem.
- arrosenberg 9y agoWhat you call "imposing their will" might be called "balancing the scales" by others. In any organized society, government necessarily creates economic rules and incentives one way or the other, through action or inaction. The debate must be over which rules provide the proper incentives to maximize utility for the most number of people, not whether rules should be made at all.
- alexryan 9y agoFair. "Balancing the scales" is a laudable goal. I merely wish to point out that suggested mechanism of balancing carries a significant downside and we might want to consider alternative means of achieving the goal. Innovation would be my preference. The more corrupt a monopoly becomes, the more motivated the best engineers are to join a startup with a "Don't be evil" mission to take them down. ;)
- ashark 9y agoOr, you know, government happens to be the best solution we have to certain types of coordination problems, some of which plague market economies. But no, I'm sure literally everything government does that interacts with the market just creates corruption without sufficient benefit to outweigh any such harm, and it'd be better if we didn't do anything at all. Certainly it's easier to think about politics if we can permanently rule out an entire class of solutions this way, saving us from having to consider and weigh each per se. Bonus points if we can define "liberty" as "fewest things outlawed by government"—measuring that is way easier than trying to figure out the degrees of freedom of action available to ordinary people in practice.
- alexryan 9y agoLots of quick hacks lead can lead to the accumulation of technical debt which can seriously impair the ability of the system to function. This can be even more problematic if the technical debt becomes a living entity intent on surviving and thriving whilst being dependent on an ever growing number of quick hacks as its only means of sustenance. ;)
- DashRattlesnake 9y agoIt's a mistake to focus too much on one problem to the exclusion of all others. There are problems caused by government intervention but also problems caused by the lack of it.
- erikpukinskis 9y ago> Instead of capital flowing to those who are best able to convert it into the most happiness for the most people This isn’t the natural progression of free market capitalism though. The money will flow to those who are best able to use it to control the behavior of their customers spending. Making someone happy is just one way of controlling their spending, but there are many, many others.
- alexryan 9y agoThat's an interesting point. Are there any examples of "alternatives ways of controlling the behavior of their customers spending" which do not result in the customer feeling motivated to withdraw from the relationship?
- nerdponx 9y agoFOMO
- DashRattlesnake 9y agoAddiction
- dreamfactored 9y agoInstead of 'the market', think of government as a union representing the collective interests of citizens and empowered to intervene when those interests are threatened by forces of nature (which I would say very much includes 'the market')
- DashRattlesnake 9y ago> capital flowing to those who are best able to convert it into the most happiness for the most people Capital flows to those most able to make money, which isn't necessarily by "converting it into the most happiness." You can even see it in this space: Facebook is the dominant social network and wins by essentially getting people addicted to getting mild social affirmations from a slot machine. Studies have actually shown social network use makes people less happy.
- thisisit 9y agoThe content looks similar to the WSJ article: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-google-facebook-duopoly-threatens-diversity-of-thought-1513642519 https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-google-facebook-duopoly-thr... Discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15960606 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15960606
- brndnmtthws 9y agoAll the more reason we need adblockers and private-by-default browsing. It worries me that I can't use something like Privoxy on Android without rooting the device. An alternative would be a good privacy VPN with blocking/filtering of ads and trackers.
- organsnyder 9y agoI've switched to using Firefox Focus as my main Android browser. It provides ad blocking and privacy features. For apps, I try to avoid ad-supported ones whenever possible, and am happy to pay for apps that I find useful.
- brndnmtthws 9y agoI'm using Focus too, it's pretty nice.
- paulie_a 9y agoI'd it possible to import passwords and bookmarks into focus? I've been meaning to ditch chrome on all devices because of the sewer of ads on chrome mobile
- JoshTriplett 9y agoYou can also just run the standard Firefox on Android, and install uBlock Origin.
- otp124 9y agoDoes the focus app block ads on Android Chrome mobile? On iOS it does.
- brndnmtthws 9y agoIt does not block ads, but it does block ad trackers.
- wan23 9y agoI think you're missing the main point here. What we really need is a better way to pay for the web. If everyone blocks all ads without solving this problem first there won't be any content left to block ads on.
- weeksie 9y agoBeing against government intervention is naive. If the US did what the EU has done with allowing people to avoid being tracked the big tech companies would be nudged toward developing smarter business models. Maybe it's not necessary but it's foolish to dismiss government out of hand. Allowing your largest companies to compete over hijacking your public's attention is precisely the sort of thing that reeks of government failure. This generation of internet users is a lot more willing to pay for content than mine was. Gen X's reluctance to spend money online is what created the attention economy to begin with. Maybe the shift will happen on its own, but how much damage will we do in the meantime?
- mgraczyk 9y agoIf the US did what the EU has done, I would probably have to wait another 50 years for products I use every day like - Google Maps - Google Speech Recognition - Google Photos Search - Google Home I'm thankful that my government has allowed innovation to continue. I'm glad they have represented my interests as a consumer by favoring technological growth over protection I neither want nor need.
- pimmen 9y agoEver used Skype? Spotify? Trivago? Those are EU tech products many people use everyday, just goes to show that intervening from time to time doesn't necessarily mean that we live in some socialist, repressive regime. You're welcome, by the way.
- hackbinary 9y agoAlso, YouTube.
- killjoywashere 9y agoYouTube is from San Mateo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_YouTube https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_YouTube
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- username223 9y agoThese people project that we'll be setting $105 billion on fire for digital ads by 2019. To put that in perspective, it's more than 10% of what we spend to provide health care to seniors and poor people via a mostly dysfunctional health care system: https://www.hhs.gov/about/budget/fy2017/budget-in-brief/cms/medicare/index.html https://www.hhs.gov/about/budget/fy2017/budget-in-brief/cms/...
- mlinksva 9y agoSolution: tax ads.
- jpadkins 9y agowe already do
- mlinksva 9y agoI don't know what jurisdiction you're in, but would love a reference. As far as I know in the U.S. there's a long history of talking about specifically taxing ads, but very little and brief doing. One overview: http://www.taxhistory.org/thp/readings.nsf/ArtWeb/E6C2E18E1E011AF485257BE400723DFB http://www.taxhistory.org/thp/readings.nsf/ArtWeb/E6C2E18E1E...
- shubhamjain 9y agoThere are only two ways to break the duopoly: create your own massive medium like Facebook or work with publishers. Having worked in this industry, I think working with publishers is an impossible battle. The whole publishing world is rife with fraud and desperate attempts to increase page views. Most publishers cram their websites with ads. The number of low-content, click-baity websites is just staggering. Sometimes I wonder how could this even be a profitable proposition for advertisers. This is one reason why Google absolutely dominates the space. It has the capability to deal with all the fraud, calculate the right reward for publishers, and give a meaningful ROI to the advertiser. Maybe a new kind of advertisement medium could unseat Google from its dominance but the way digital advertising works today, it sounds like an impossible idea.
- stevesearer 9y agoMy site https://officesnapshots.com https://officesnapshots.com doesn’t really fit into either of those molds. We sell our own advertising space, self-host it, and use static jpgs for the graphics. The ads are also targeted against the content (office design) and tend to be for products like office furniture. In a roundabout way this targets the readers but only because if they are on the site they are likely interested in learning about new products in their field.
- mcrowcroft 9y agoDo you track things like viewability? Why not use something like an adserver?
- rhizome 9y agoWhat true value do either of those provide?
- stingraycharles 9y agoIt provides better observability on what's actually going on with your ads, and allows for an advertiser to buy based on available inventory (e.g. # of impressions) rather than a date range.
- jasode 9y ago>I don’t think subscriptions are the only answer here, as many do. >We need models that support free consumption of media for many reasons. If you rule out paid subscriptions to subsidize the freeriders, what options are left for "free" consumption? Either advertisements or a government-sponsored system (e.g. citizens taxed to support the BBC tv channels). If there's a crypto financing option that Fred is hinting at, what would that look like?
- amoorthy 9y agoAny idea why Fred is not a believer in subscriptions? My hypothesis is subscriptions, for news at least, are all-or-nothing propositions. But in a world where there's so much content, much of it for free, we will only want to bypass a paywall for a given site occasionally when we encounter it. Why hasn't someone built a variable subscription model that is geared to one's reading habits?
- jasode 9y ago>Any idea why Fred is not a believer in subscriptions? He's ok with subscriptions. However, his particular statement is in context of subscriptions interfering with providing free content. As far as I can tell, if we want to have websites provide "free" content we have the following choices to that puzzle: 1) sponsored by advertisers 2) sponsored by government taxes (e.g. collect a new "web usage tax" from citizens to fund a CitizenBook as free alternative to Facebook ads and PublicNewsTimes as free alternative to New York Times paid subscription. I doubt that enough voters would support such a tax just to avoid ads.) 3) blockchain? cryptocurrency? (Not sure what Fred has seen with this option.)
- nickdandakis 9y agoSubscription fatigue, maybe? The idea of variable subscription models is interesting, especially if the consumer can see detailed justifications for their bill. I think that's a key point in battling subscription fatigue. Software companies water down their financial models to a very simplistic bill, partly because there's no way of (easily) variably billing consumers of their software, but also because it's easy to understand. I know that if I received an easily digestible bill of my monthly Spotify usage, and was charged more than what I'm currently paying for on my fixed plan, I'd be ok with it. I also know that if I'm not using Spotify as much for a specific month, and was charged less than what I normally pay for it, I'd also be very ok with it!
- brucephillips 9y ago> I don’t want nor do I expect any governmental response to this market failure. Why is it a failure? Price? Quality? Something else? I'm not convinced this is a problem.
- CaptSpify 9y agoHow do you not consider people being openly lied to and manipulated on a daily basis anything other than a failure?
- brucephillips 9y agoI never said I did. What on earth are you talking about?
- CaptSpify 9y agoThat is what advertising is in it's current state. You said you don't see that as a failure
- brucephillips 9y agoNo, I didnt. I said I don't see the duopoly as a failure. Not all aspects of the current advertising industry are necessarily a consequence of duopoly.
- f00_ 9y agomarket participants not taking externalities into account. i.e. this transaction benefits both you and me, but doesn't take into account the effect of the transaction on the environment/others
- brucephillips 9y agoWhat do externalities have to do with duopolies?
- buro9 9y agoIsn't this normal? Doesn't radio advertising have a similar duopoly? Same for outdoor advertising? The internet never delivered disintermediation, it only changed who those intermediaries were.
- malchow 9y agoCofounder of successful mid-tier competitor in this space (www.publir.com). Can confirm.
- herodotus 9y agoThe problem with subscriptions is not the cost, its the sheer number of them - and some come up almost accidentally. I pay a lot to my ISP every month. I would like to see a company that charges me monthly to eliminate all adware by micro-paying the participating websites for my actual page visits. In fact, if my ISP added such a service for a fee, I would sign up.
- dreamfactored 9y agoNext wave - aggregated subscription bundlers? Would also facilitate cross-marketing
- andschwa 9y agoThat's kind of the idea behind ORCHID: https://orchidprotocol.com/ https://orchidprotocol.com/.
- harshreality 9y agoYou want your ISP to [be able to] spy on, and track, your browsing habits? For unencrypted pages, that would probably take the form of DPI and injected javascript. For encrypted (SSL) web traffic, all your ISP has access to are 1) the ip of the website, 2) SNI hostname, if any, in the SSL helo, and 3) how long the TCP stream stays alive, which is probably not representative of your interaction with the site. They have no page-level information. There's already a service that is probably capable of doing what you ask. It's called google analytics. Google's in the payment business, and google's in the tracking business. If only all publishers could agree to use analytics.js, and petition google to implement micropayments with some agreed upon fee structure.
- CaptSpify 9y ago>We need models that support free consumption of media for many reasons. We have that already. In fact, we've had it for a while. The problem is that we keep taking something that is already free to distribute, and putting it behind arbitrary gates. We then think it's perfectly normal to pay the gatekeepers. I don't know why we still use this model which hasn't made sense for >10 years.
- tannhaeuser 9y agoAll that needed to happen is that the authority responsible for enforcing US antitrust laws vetoed against the acquisition of DoubleClick by Google and of Whatsapp by Facebook. Why haven't they?
- jpadkins 9y agoboth of those acquisitions contribute a small amount to each companies earnings. There will still be a duopoly without those acquisitions.
- misterbowfinger 9y agoIt feels like an obvious revenue stream for content publishers is in education - specifically, MOOCs. "Content" is really access to interesting information and storytelling. That'd lend itself well to highly specialized MOOCs that people would pay for, potentially. (I guess that's not technically a MOOC, but you know what I mean).
- kiwicopple 9y agoThis is something that I'm exploring in 2018 with a group of people from the publishing world. Still very early stages, but if you have any further ideas or solutions then we'd love to hear them: https://pollygot.io https://pollygot.io e: link
- Abhishek41783 9y agoWith increment in dollars spent on digital advertising there seems to be a huge growth potential for online advertising agencies that can create successful campaigns- those not measured by likes, clicks, taps ... But by actual sales figures.