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This view from a publisher convinced me in 2017 that Google should not own both the dominant business in DoubleClick's market and in AdExchange's market: https

by chalst 6y ago

This view from a publisher convinced me in 2017 that Google should not own both the dominant business in DoubleClick's market and in AdExchange's market: https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/a-serf-on-googles-farm https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/a-serf-on-googles-farm > But here’s where the rubber really meets the road. The publishers use DoubleClick. The big advertisers use DoubleClick. The big global advertising holding companies use Doubleclick. Everybody at every point in the industry is wired into DoubleClick. Here’s how they all play together. The adserving (Doubleclick) is like the road. (Adexchange) is the biggest car on the road. But only AdExchange gets full visibility into what’s available. (There’s lot of details here and argument about just what Google does and doesn’t know. But trust me on this. They keep the key information to themselves. This isn’t a suspicion. It’s the model.) So Google owns the road and gets first look at what’s on the road. Not only does Google own the road and makes the rules for the road, it has special privileges on the road. One of the ways it has special privileges is that it has all the data it gets from search, Google Analytics and Gmail. It also gets to make the first bid on every bit of inventory. Of course that’s critical. First dibs with more information than anyone else has access to. (Some exceptions to this. But that’s the big picture.) It’s good to be the king. It’s good to be a Google. > There’s more I’ll get to in a moment but the interplay between DoubleClick and Adexchange is so vastly important to the entirety of the web, digital publishing and the entire ad industry that it is almost impossible to overstate. Again. They own the road. They make the rules for the road. They get special privileges on the road with every new iteration of rules. There are a lot of people bothered by this, so this data discovery could prove very expensive for Google.

chrisdinn 6y ago
After years at Google on DFP/Ad Manager these quotes read kinda sad to me because this is a lot conspiracy sounding stuff and in reality it’s just not that kind of operation. Sell-side ad tech (ie. DRX) doesn’t make much money for Google, relatively. If Google likes AdX why isn’t YT inventory on it? Because they actually like the buy-side tools. Sell-side gets basically no love, no real fresh ideas. I say this having the utmost, deep respect for Ad Manager/AdX’s current and former eng & product leaders. What happens here isn’t about market dominance, no one is thinking that. They already killed the display publishing golden goose, by Google standards there’s nothing to dominate in pub ads the business died. It’s a small market, now, putting display ads on other people’s websites. Big business is O&O which exploded around it, this is obvious. Projects like this are about two forces colliding: smart engineers without a deep understanding or connection to the publishing industry and an internal org losing relevance/importance as its size relative to its peers decreases. IMO, (this is definitely just my opinion) the real real problem is none of the ads you can by through AdX actually work. Using OA a lot leads to users tuning out your ad units because they are often really weird or bad-quality & register as noise.
- secondcoming 6y ago
  What are O&O and OA?
  - le-mark 6y ago
    I was going to ask as well. There’s an incredible amount of jargon around internet ads and marketing in general. Impenetrable to non practitioners imo.
  - gennarro 6y ago
    First is “owned and operated” as in YouTube is a property that is “owned and operated” by google.
  - chrisdinn 6y ago
    OA is just open auction which is what most people think of when they think of AdX, ie. more or less anyone can bids on your inventory. O&O is owned and operated, where you actually own the audience. In the simplest case this is like YT or Insta for Google and FB but it can be kinda nuanced with more traffic falling under the umbrella than you’d think. More and more this is where energy and attention is being focused, especially as cross-site data becomes scarcer.
    - thu2111 6y ago
      Could you explain O&O more? Surely all sites where ads appear are owned and operated by someone, that sounds kind of tautological. Or do you mean, the ad infrastructure itself is owned and operated by the site owner - in which case, what is there for Google to do?
      - chrisdinn 6y ago
        You want to flip this. Google/Facebook operate the ad tech and own the site (or, more accurately the audience) so they don’t need to deal with third-party publishers on a per-request basis at all.
      - 6y ago
peteretep 6y ago
> There are a lot of people bothered by this, so this data discovery could prove very expensive for Google. Apparently none of the right people are sufficiently bothered, because it’s been this way for a decade and we’ve seen no real resolution to date.
- chalst 6y ago
  I don't know if we'll see a "real resolution" or not, but Google is currently unpopular with the GOP and this story might have the power to sour many Dems on Google. A bipartisan push for antitrust measures would be very dangerous for Google. Even if we don't see an effective clipping of Google's wings in Congress, the court case was already likely to be expensive just on the basis of the cartel with Facebook the Texas lawsuit has already showed. Recall that the EU fined Google €1.49 billion for restrictive contracts with AdSense. - https://edition.cnn.com/2019/03/20/tech/google-eu-antitrust/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2019/03/20/tech/google-eu-antitrust/...
dathinab 6y ago
And guess what, thinks will get way worse with FLoC as it will add an technical unavoidable dependency on Google to all advertisers, even those which are currently independent of Google... While is at the same time questionable that it actually improves privacy at all and likely will not be ad-block able.
- tpxl 6y ago
  > likely will not be ad-block able Surely if it's local you can delete it or substitute for dummy data.
  - dathinab 6y ago
    Sure if you custom compile your chromium or similar...
    - t0mas88 6y ago
      Or decide not to use chromium, it's better for the web if we bring more balance in browser usage.
      - dathinab 6y ago
        It's not about what I do. it's about what the majority of technical not very versatile users will do. Convincing them to install a ad-blocker is one thing, but convincing them to use a completely different browser is way harder. Furthermore if google pushes it through it's quite likely that it's just a matter of time until many sites will refuse to work if you don't have it enabled (similar as some sites don't work if you have an ad-blocker enabled). So then it would be just a matter of time until many alternative browsers (e.g. firefox) are forced to have it enabled by default.
    - tpxl 6y ago
      A big scary extension that can read all your data should be able to do that.
judge2020 6y ago
Gmail data stopped being used for advertising in 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/23/technology/gmail-ads.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/23/technology/gmail-ads.html
- sjg007 6y ago
  I don’t believe it. I get target ads in gmail based on search or browsing queries.
  - joshuamorton 6y ago
    These two comments don't contradict each other.
  - judge2020 6y ago
    You see ads, but your Gmail data isn’t used (ie. scanning emails and adding insight to your advertising profile).

by chalst 6y ago

chrisdinn 6y ago

After years at Google on DFP/Ad Manager these quotes read kinda sad to me because this is a lot conspiracy sounding stuff and in reality it’s just not that kind of operation. Sell-side ad tech (ie. DRX) doesn’t make much money for Google, relatively. If Google likes AdX why isn’t YT inventory on it? Because they actually like the buy-side tools. Sell-side gets basically no love, no real fresh ideas. I say this having the utmost, deep respect for Ad Manager/AdX’s current and former eng & product leaders. What happens here isn’t about market dominance, no one is thinking that. They already killed the display publishing golden goose, by Google standards there’s nothing to dominate in pub ads the business died. It’s a small market, now, putting display ads on other people’s websites. Big business is O&O which exploded around it, this is obvious. Projects like this are about two forces colliding: smart engineers without a deep understanding or connection to the publishing industry and an internal org losing relevance/importance as its size relative to its peers decreases. IMO, (this is definitely just my opinion) the real real problem is none of the ads you can by through AdX actually work. Using OA a lot leads to users tuning out your ad units because they are often really weird or bad-quality & register as noise.

secondcoming 6y ago
What are O&O and OA?
- le-mark 6y ago
  I was going to ask as well. There’s an incredible amount of jargon around internet ads and marketing in general. Impenetrable to non practitioners imo.
- gennarro 6y ago
  First is “owned and operated” as in YouTube is a property that is “owned and operated” by google.
- chrisdinn 6y ago
  OA is just open auction which is what most people think of when they think of AdX, ie. more or less anyone can bids on your inventory. O&O is owned and operated, where you actually own the audience. In the simplest case this is like YT or Insta for Google and FB but it can be kinda nuanced with more traffic falling under the umbrella than you’d think. More and more this is where energy and attention is being focused, especially as cross-site data becomes scarcer.
  - thu2111 6y ago
    Could you explain O&O more? Surely all sites where ads appear are owned and operated by someone, that sounds kind of tautological. Or do you mean, the ad infrastructure itself is owned and operated by the site owner - in which case, what is there for Google to do?
    - chrisdinn 6y ago
      You want to flip this. Google/Facebook operate the ad tech and own the site (or, more accurately the audience) so they don’t need to deal with third-party publishers on a per-request basis at all.
    - 6y ago

peteretep 6y ago

> There are a lot of people bothered by this, so this data discovery could prove very expensive for Google. Apparently none of the right people are sufficiently bothered, because it’s been this way for a decade and we’ve seen no real resolution to date.

chalst 6y ago
I don't know if we'll see a "real resolution" or not, but Google is currently unpopular with the GOP and this story might have the power to sour many Dems on Google. A bipartisan push for antitrust measures would be very dangerous for Google. Even if we don't see an effective clipping of Google's wings in Congress, the court case was already likely to be expensive just on the basis of the cartel with Facebook the Texas lawsuit has already showed. Recall that the EU fined Google €1.49 billion for restrictive contracts with AdSense. - https://edition.cnn.com/2019/03/20/tech/google-eu-antitrust/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2019/03/20/tech/google-eu-antitrust/...

dathinab 6y ago

And guess what, thinks will get way worse with FLoC as it will add an technical unavoidable dependency on Google to all advertisers, even those which are currently independent of Google... While is at the same time questionable that it actually improves privacy at all and likely will not be ad-block able.

tpxl 6y ago
> likely will not be ad-block able Surely if it's local you can delete it or substitute for dummy data.
- dathinab 6y ago
  Sure if you custom compile your chromium or similar...
  - t0mas88 6y ago
    Or decide not to use chromium, it's better for the web if we bring more balance in browser usage.
    - dathinab 6y ago
      It's not about what I do. it's about what the majority of technical not very versatile users will do. Convincing them to install a ad-blocker is one thing, but convincing them to use a completely different browser is way harder. Furthermore if google pushes it through it's quite likely that it's just a matter of time until many sites will refuse to work if you don't have it enabled (similar as some sites don't work if you have an ad-blocker enabled). So then it would be just a matter of time until many alternative browsers (e.g. firefox) are forced to have it enabled by default.
  - tpxl 6y ago
    A big scary extension that can read all your data should be able to do that.

judge2020 6y ago

Gmail data stopped being used for advertising in 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/23/technology/gmail-ads.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/23/technology/gmail-ads.html

sjg007 6y ago
I don’t believe it. I get target ads in gmail based on search or browsing queries.
- joshuamorton 6y ago
  These two comments don't contradict each other.
- judge2020 6y ago
  You see ads, but your Gmail data isn’t used (ie. scanning emails and adding insight to your advertising profile).