4 ms·

Would love to know why the title of this story was re-written to majorly soften it (it was the number 1 story when published as Google Ads are down worldwide)

zinekeller 4y ago
"Ad Manager is not delivering ads for affected users" is definitely a reasonable title, I am also curious on why it was changed into a vaguer title (which is very likely a mod edit).
- muppetman 4y ago
  It's a reasonable title, but it downplays the significance of the issue that the original title conveyed.
- celestialcheese 4y ago
  It was a mod edit. Google is soft-balling the impact of this, and I think the watered down title doesn't do it justice. Google's ad server is behind nearly 90% of all ads served outside of the walled gardens, and the ad server has been down now for 3 hours. But because the ad server is a part of GAM, and their UI and reporting are still up, they can call it a partial outage.
nycdatasci 4y ago
“Ads down worldwide” was and is not accurate. The currently disclosed scope of this issue is Ad manager clients, which tend to be large publishers with significant direct ad sales. Google search is still showing me ads.
- zinekeller 4y ago
  I'm not sure where to divide the line. All Google properties still have ads on them, but despite using a vanilla Chrome I cannot get ads* outside of Google, so it is indeed larger than just large sites. * Okay, I can get Taboola and Outbrain ads, is this counted for this discussion? Edit: "Ad serving has now been restored for the affected users." (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33917305 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33917305)
  - reilly3000 4y ago
    Taboola/Outbrain are the only major players that don’t run through Ad Manager (DFP) because they build their own stack from scratch outside of the standardized IAB formats. All others must kiss the ring and pay the toll to Google. Facebook bought and killed Atlas, it’s only credible competition. For a full decade Google has own the display ad server wholly, Ad selling and buying tools for automated and manual transactions, the lions share of web analytics traffic, most of the display, video, mobile, and search inventory on the entire web, and first and last bid option on all auctions against their competitors. Don’t forget the myriad of ways they collect exclusive purchase, behavior, demographic, and location data with meaningless consent. All of that data is used to multiply the value of ad sales, and is otherwise unobtainable. If you look at their business models abstractly, you’ll see what it looks like to have Horizontal and Vertical integration, regulatory capture, price control, and centralized censorship powers. The amount of influence and operational responsibility that Google has for various aspects of US government+military would shock most cynics. If there is justice in this world, most of what they have been doing will soon be illegal and should have been the whole time. It’s a dangerous duopoly with all non FAANG publishers and tech fighting over the remaining 10% and still getting fabulously wealthy from it. All of froth from the quarter trillion it makes each year has flowed into AI for at least a decade. It has all of the ingredients to have an exclusively owned AGI, and may have had one for several years already. I’m now well into the realm of speculation, but I submit that the AGI has or will have access to the worlds largest corpus of human knowledge along with intimate accounts of individual human behaviors. All to sell fucking ads.
- AlbertCory 4y ago
  Disclaimer: I was in Google Ads, but a long time ago, so this may be outdated. In particular, "Ad Manager" is not a term that means anything to me. Nonetheless, there was: AdWords (ads in Google Search, the big money maker, which stayed up, and I tried it), Display Ads (which I guess was down), and AFS (ads that appear on third party search pages, like Target or Walmart, or Google properties other than Search). Display Ads (or DFP) are the blinky things everyone's complaining about: ads on third party pages other than search pages. I never really worked in that area so I don't know much about it. If Search Ads stay up, the Google Money Machine is still running, just not on all cylinders.

zinekeller 4y ago

"Ad Manager is not delivering ads for affected users" is definitely a reasonable title, I am also curious on why it was changed into a vaguer title (which is very likely a mod edit).

muppetman 4y ago
It's a reasonable title, but it downplays the significance of the issue that the original title conveyed.
celestialcheese 4y ago
It was a mod edit. Google is soft-balling the impact of this, and I think the watered down title doesn't do it justice. Google's ad server is behind nearly 90% of all ads served outside of the walled gardens, and the ad server has been down now for 3 hours. But because the ad server is a part of GAM, and their UI and reporting are still up, they can call it a partial outage.

nycdatasci 4y ago

“Ads down worldwide” was and is not accurate. The currently disclosed scope of this issue is Ad manager clients, which tend to be large publishers with significant direct ad sales. Google search is still showing me ads.

zinekeller 4y ago
I'm not sure where to divide the line. All Google properties still have ads on them, but despite using a vanilla Chrome I cannot get ads* outside of Google, so it is indeed larger than just large sites. * Okay, I can get Taboola and Outbrain ads, is this counted for this discussion? Edit: "Ad serving has now been restored for the affected users." (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33917305 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33917305)
- reilly3000 4y ago
  Taboola/Outbrain are the only major players that don’t run through Ad Manager (DFP) because they build their own stack from scratch outside of the standardized IAB formats. All others must kiss the ring and pay the toll to Google. Facebook bought and killed Atlas, it’s only credible competition. For a full decade Google has own the display ad server wholly, Ad selling and buying tools for automated and manual transactions, the lions share of web analytics traffic, most of the display, video, mobile, and search inventory on the entire web, and first and last bid option on all auctions against their competitors. Don’t forget the myriad of ways they collect exclusive purchase, behavior, demographic, and location data with meaningless consent. All of that data is used to multiply the value of ad sales, and is otherwise unobtainable. If you look at their business models abstractly, you’ll see what it looks like to have Horizontal and Vertical integration, regulatory capture, price control, and centralized censorship powers. The amount of influence and operational responsibility that Google has for various aspects of US government+military would shock most cynics. If there is justice in this world, most of what they have been doing will soon be illegal and should have been the whole time. It’s a dangerous duopoly with all non FAANG publishers and tech fighting over the remaining 10% and still getting fabulously wealthy from it. All of froth from the quarter trillion it makes each year has flowed into AI for at least a decade. It has all of the ingredients to have an exclusively owned AGI, and may have had one for several years already. I’m now well into the realm of speculation, but I submit that the AGI has or will have access to the worlds largest corpus of human knowledge along with intimate accounts of individual human behaviors. All to sell fucking ads.
AlbertCory 4y ago
Disclaimer: I was in Google Ads, but a long time ago, so this may be outdated. In particular, "Ad Manager" is not a term that means anything to me. Nonetheless, there was: AdWords (ads in Google Search, the big money maker, which stayed up, and I tried it), Display Ads (which I guess was down), and AFS (ads that appear on third party search pages, like Target or Walmart, or Google properties other than Search). Display Ads (or DFP) are the blinky things everyone's complaining about: ads on third party pages other than search pages. I never really worked in that area so I don't know much about it. If Search Ads stay up, the Google Money Machine is still running, just not on all cylinders.