5 ms·

The new dot com bubble is here: it’s called online advertising

29 points by raleighm 7y ago

DuskStar 7y ago
Posted a few days ago with 350 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21465873 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21465873
ivanjaros 7y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_VxHvwgMVE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_VxHvwgMVE
anovikov 7y ago
If it's really only $280B worldwide and world has circa 80T of nominal GDP or probably about 55T of consumer spending, it makes only 0.5%. It's seriously VERY hard to believe it's not an efficient spend of money. For many people, online ads (or at least if you include SMM, for sure), even if you never click on them, is a serious driver of consumer behavior. I don't have any social media accounts, too old for most consumer target groups, and i am as underrepresented online as possible, and yet i am sure i am making way more than 0.5% of my consumer choices that way. Can't see it as a bubble.
- rolltiide 7y ago
  What exactly are you extrapolating here? You just described yourself as the least qualified person to make that conclusion all while seeming to use your behavior as reference that other people behave as an amplified version of consumer you. And that all seems to be a distraction: a “bubble” bursting doesn’t mean the behavior stops, it means less money is poured into the industry of supporting the bubble. It means the current size and market behavior is an inefficient consolidation of capital and productivity.
cryptica 7y ago
The part about cause and effect was very interesting. So possibly Facebook knows if a user is likely to buy something from a specific company and it will show an ad to them in order to boost their conversion numbers to fool the advertiser about the effectiveness of the ads. But the ad has no effect other than to artificially boost conversions. It doesn't achieve what it was paid to do; to convince users. It reminds me of the old saying that merely finding a way to measure a trend has the side effect that it allows people to game that trend.

29 points by raleighm 7y ago

Posted a few days ago with 350 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21465873 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21465873

ivanjaros 7y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_VxHvwgMVE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_VxHvwgMVE

anovikov 7y ago

If it's really only $280B worldwide and world has circa 80T of nominal GDP or probably about 55T of consumer spending, it makes only 0.5%. It's seriously VERY hard to believe it's not an efficient spend of money. For many people, online ads (or at least if you include SMM, for sure), even if you never click on them, is a serious driver of consumer behavior. I don't have any social media accounts, too old for most consumer target groups, and i am as underrepresented online as possible, and yet i am sure i am making way more than 0.5% of my consumer choices that way. Can't see it as a bubble.

rolltiide 7y ago
What exactly are you extrapolating here? You just described yourself as the least qualified person to make that conclusion all while seeming to use your behavior as reference that other people behave as an amplified version of consumer you. And that all seems to be a distraction: a “bubble” bursting doesn’t mean the behavior stops, it means less money is poured into the industry of supporting the bubble. It means the current size and market behavior is an inefficient consolidation of capital and productivity.

cryptica 7y ago

The part about cause and effect was very interesting. So possibly Facebook knows if a user is likely to buy something from a specific company and it will show an ad to them in order to boost their conversion numbers to fool the advertiser about the effectiveness of the ads. But the ad has no effect other than to artificially boost conversions. It doesn't achieve what it was paid to do; to convince users. It reminds me of the old saying that merely finding a way to measure a trend has the side effect that it allows people to game that trend.