5 ms·

Advertising industry insider here: I am seeing a lot of misinformation in this thread. Advertisers have been using (installs / In-app purchasing / shopping car

Advertising industry insider here: I am seeing a lot of misinformation in this thread. Advertisers have been using (installs / In-app purchasing / shopping cart tracking) to calculate ROAS (ROI) for YEARS. And the modern targeting is actually pretty good in general. Only big brand advertisers (like Clorox/PG/etc) evaluate ad spend on the impression/click level. This is not the norm (unless you want to lose your shirt to bots/fraud). We have made it a long way from the blunt-instrument advertising of past years. Full disclosure: there may indeed be a 'changing-of-the-guard' happening with regard to brand advertisers waking up to the available tech, but that is a different story.. Overall, this is a non-story. Many corporations were slapped with a massive bill after the passage of Trump's tax cuts. Not just Google. So with that liability, of course PROFIT dropped. But the REVENUE is what you want to look at for these 'bubble' discussions (and that is strong), so nothing to see here...

CamTin 9y ago
Can you explain why a tax cut would lead to a huge bill?
- goldenkey 9y ago
  They decided to finally pay their (lower) taxes to move them into U.S banks instead of illegally holding the funds offshore
  - xbmcuser 9y ago
    1. It was not illegal for them to keep the money offshore 2. They had to pay 1 time tax on money held offshore. once it is paid they still don't need to bring it back just it won't cost them anything to bring back.
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    They were already, largely, in US banks. The offshore status was entirely an accounting status, and there was nothing illegal about it. It was tax avoidance, not evasion.
  - tanilama 9y ago
    Illegal? In what sense?
    - tedunangst 9y ago
      In the sense that if I were god emperor I would have made a law against it.
- advisedwang 9y ago
  The corporate tax rate was cut, but it was also expanded to include foreign income. Companies with offshore holdings that never had income tax paid had to pay a one-off tax bill on that. Google paid $9.9B in this one-off tax payment, which is larger than their entire margin for the quarter.
  - polskibus 9y ago
    If their offshore holdings are profits made offshore, then shouldn't those profits be taxed offshore? Is this what Trump really did, taxed offshore before EU does it, so the EU taxes will be much lower?
    - iainmerrick 9y ago
      If their offshore holdings are profits made offshore, then shouldn't those profits be taxed offshore? Typically, the profits are held in tax havens, with low or zero tax. So effectively they are not being taxed already, due to loopholes in the tax code.
- toast0 9y ago
  The tax bill changed many things. It reduced many tax rates and it sort of eliminated corporate taxes on income earned outside the country. It added a corporate alternative minimum tax on global income that will mostly apply when income is taxed below 10% in the country where it is earned. It also added a one time tax on any earnings held overseas from prior tax years. The one time tax is hitting companies that were holding earnings overseas. The corporate AMT will hit companies with very low global taxes.
  - polskibus 9y ago
    Earnings earned where? Surely it's ok to keep earnings earned overseas, overseas?
    - refulgentis 9y ago
      Outside the country. Yes.
    - toast0 9y ago
      Until 2017, As a US corporation, earnings earned overseas were taxable in the US, but the taxes were only assessed if the earnings were brought into the US (repatriated). Since 2018, as a US corporation, earnings earned overseas are not taxable in the US in the general tax (20%ish); they are taxable in the alternative minimum tax (10%ish), but there is a credit for taxes paid overseas. As a transition, in the 2018 tax year, any prior earnings earned overseas and not previously repatriated are subject to a one time transition tax.
IBM 9y ago
>Many corporations were slapped with a massive bill after the passage of Trump's tax cuts. That only happened to companies who weren't booking deferred tax liabilities this entire time. Apple on the other hand has been conservative about their accounting, so the $38B tax they're paying has already been accounted for. Apple's profitability has been understated for years because of that (or you could say everyone else has been overstating their profitability).
indubitable 9y ago
Out of curiosity, where do you see the future of ads going as free ad-driven services, such as Facebook, start to approach market saturation? Increasing revenue further would mean that product would need to increase ads, or somehow increase ad efficiency, but either case seems likely to deteriorate the user experience which could end up counter productive for all involved, at least in the long run. I'm certainly oversimplifying things, but it seems like ad driven models have a very clear ceiling. Or is the endgame to simply to continue increasing costs to advertisers?
- zukzuk 9y ago
  Facebook is going all in on conversion optimization — "increasing ad efficiency" as you put it. They've gotten really good at it, and I think there's a whole lot of room for it to get much better. This is especially true for direct response ads, and you can bet most of the revenue will come from growth in DR.
  - nojvek 9y ago
    I just read that as Facebook will track even more private parts of your life and enagage in darker patterns to make you click on their ads.
- stanley 9y ago
  There's still plenty of room for improvement in the attribution side of things.

CamTin 9y ago

Can you explain why a tax cut would lead to a huge bill?

goldenkey 9y ago
They decided to finally pay their (lower) taxes to move them into U.S banks instead of illegally holding the funds offshore
- xbmcuser 9y ago
  1. It was not illegal for them to keep the money offshore 2. They had to pay 1 time tax on money held offshore. once it is paid they still don't need to bring it back just it won't cost them anything to bring back.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  They were already, largely, in US banks. The offshore status was entirely an accounting status, and there was nothing illegal about it. It was tax avoidance, not evasion.
- tanilama 9y ago
  Illegal? In what sense?
  - tedunangst 9y ago
    In the sense that if I were god emperor I would have made a law against it.
advisedwang 9y ago
The corporate tax rate was cut, but it was also expanded to include foreign income. Companies with offshore holdings that never had income tax paid had to pay a one-off tax bill on that. Google paid $9.9B in this one-off tax payment, which is larger than their entire margin for the quarter.
- polskibus 9y ago
  If their offshore holdings are profits made offshore, then shouldn't those profits be taxed offshore? Is this what Trump really did, taxed offshore before EU does it, so the EU taxes will be much lower?
  - iainmerrick 9y ago
    If their offshore holdings are profits made offshore, then shouldn't those profits be taxed offshore? Typically, the profits are held in tax havens, with low or zero tax. So effectively they are not being taxed already, due to loopholes in the tax code.
toast0 9y ago
The tax bill changed many things. It reduced many tax rates and it sort of eliminated corporate taxes on income earned outside the country. It added a corporate alternative minimum tax on global income that will mostly apply when income is taxed below 10% in the country where it is earned. It also added a one time tax on any earnings held overseas from prior tax years. The one time tax is hitting companies that were holding earnings overseas. The corporate AMT will hit companies with very low global taxes.
- polskibus 9y ago
  Earnings earned where? Surely it's ok to keep earnings earned overseas, overseas?
  - refulgentis 9y ago
    Outside the country. Yes.
  - toast0 9y ago
    Until 2017, As a US corporation, earnings earned overseas were taxable in the US, but the taxes were only assessed if the earnings were brought into the US (repatriated). Since 2018, as a US corporation, earnings earned overseas are not taxable in the US in the general tax (20%ish); they are taxable in the alternative minimum tax (10%ish), but there is a credit for taxes paid overseas. As a transition, in the 2018 tax year, any prior earnings earned overseas and not previously repatriated are subject to a one time transition tax.

IBM 9y ago

>Many corporations were slapped with a massive bill after the passage of Trump's tax cuts. That only happened to companies who weren't booking deferred tax liabilities this entire time. Apple on the other hand has been conservative about their accounting, so the $38B tax they're paying has already been accounted for. Apple's profitability has been understated for years because of that (or you could say everyone else has been overstating their profitability).

indubitable 9y ago

Out of curiosity, where do you see the future of ads going as free ad-driven services, such as Facebook, start to approach market saturation? Increasing revenue further would mean that product would need to increase ads, or somehow increase ad efficiency, but either case seems likely to deteriorate the user experience which could end up counter productive for all involved, at least in the long run. I'm certainly oversimplifying things, but it seems like ad driven models have a very clear ceiling. Or is the endgame to simply to continue increasing costs to advertisers?

zukzuk 9y ago
Facebook is going all in on conversion optimization — "increasing ad efficiency" as you put it. They've gotten really good at it, and I think there's a whole lot of room for it to get much better. This is especially true for direct response ads, and you can bet most of the revenue will come from growth in DR.
- nojvek 9y ago
  I just read that as Facebook will track even more private parts of your life and enagage in darker patterns to make you click on their ads.
stanley 9y ago
There's still plenty of room for improvement in the attribution side of things.