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I think online advertising as we know it will be essentially dead by the end of the decade. Because most businesses are paying for google ads, you're basically
by sam0x17 4y ago
I think online advertising as we know it will be essentially dead by the end of the decade. Because most businesses are paying for google ads, you're basically paying a highway toll for the organic traffic you would get for free anyway, and advertisers haven't figured out the ruse. This whole idea that people search for A and are going to be willing to instead click on B if you put it at the top is super overblown -- 99% of the time they still want to and will click on A, they'll just scroll down. Impressions in search don't convert people anymore. This is why people's bounce rates have become worse and worse since the 2010s -- most ad clicks are miss-clicks.
And when people _are_ shopping around, they search for things like "best vpn providers 2022" and then go to that article and look at the breakdown. People don't click on B unless they're already sold on it, and search placement just isn't doing it for people anymore because the ad results have just been so bad for so long all trust is gone.
The modern populace has become completely innoculated against the effectiveness of search ads imo. Most people don't even see those results they have mental blinders and scroll down a bit.
- somenameforme 4y agoThe people spamming bigger dick pills, viagra, and the like back in the day made money, and in some cases quite substantial amounts of it. They did so simply for the fact that even if 99.9999% of people didn't go for it, that 0.00001% was far more than enough to show a healthy profit after 'advertising' costs. The point is that advertising won't end until the formula of additional_ad_driven_revenue > ad_costs becomes false. And we're a long ways away from that given how inordinately expensive advertising is relative to the costs incurred by the companies selling the advertising. And each time that equilibrium price goes lower, the potential market of advertisers who may purchase ads grows. This logic suggests that, if anything, advertising will get even worse as ad revenues decline. Go low enough and we'll be right back to square one with Google Ads promoting big dick pills and viagra. That's to say nothing of the fact that as revenues decline, both Google and advertisers will be looking for ever more insidious and forceful ways to make you watch and make you consume. Imagine, for instance, the countless dystopias things like Google Nest could enable - if such products ever managed to gain widespread adoption.
- Nadya 4y ago> And when people _are_ shopping around, they search for things like "best vpn providers 2022" Which coincidentally a number of VPN "review" sites were purchased and the lists "updated" to recommend a certain owner that I'm fairly certain at this point is a honeypot. https://restoreprivacy.com/kape-technologies-owns-expressvpn-cyberghost-pia-zenmate-vpn-review-sites/ https://restoreprivacy.com/kape-technologies-owns-expressvpn... https://www.techradar.com/news/pc-mag-owner-j2-global-buys-sixth-vpn-provider https://www.techradar.com/news/pc-mag-owner-j2-global-buys-s... Kape Technologies was formerly known as Crossrider before it was acquired by Teddy Sagi, an Israeli billionaire that has spent time in jail for insider trading. Crossrider itself never had that great a reputation itself, what with their primary product being a development platform through which they were frequently used by third parties to invade ad platforms to serve up malware.
- HWR_14 4y agoIIRC, there are quite a few review networks set up like that. John Oliver's Drug Rehabilitation episode pointed out that the same thing happened with "independent" reviews of drug rehabs.
- sam0x17 4y agoCompletely right, but my point is it's the review sites / honeypots that move the needle on whether people will choose A over B, not A or B out-bidding each other in Google Ads.