7 ms·

The future of streaming is ads

15 points by ecliptik 3y ago

mattnewton 3y ago
Seems like what doctorow calls “enshitification,” specifically step 2 https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys
paulpauper 3y ago
everyone thinks that the future is VR, AI, defi/NFTs, crypto, whatever...it's ads. That is where the tech brainpower is going: either finding new ways to show ads, optimize ads vs. watch time, or bypass ad blockers. Just as slots are the lifeblood of casinos, ads are the lifeblood of big tech. People will tolerate a surprisingly high quantity of ads. TV is still popular and full of ads now, way worse now than it used to be. The biggest realization post-Covid is that youtube had underestimated people's tolerance for ads, so are showing more of them. The dotcom boom of the '90s was correct about the viability ad-supported business models, but were too early: online advertisers were not paying enough, not enough users, not enough bandwidth, and the ads were not optimized. Super-pricey mobile ads, around 2010 and with the popularity of smart phones and 3g/4g speed, changed everything. this is why I am invested in Meta.
- andsoitis 3y ago
  > Ads are the lifeblood of big tech A bit exaggerated, no? Out of the top 5 big tech companies (Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft) I would only describe it as the lifeblood of Meta and Alphabet. While the others also have ad revenue streams, they neither depend on it nor is it their biggest source of revenue.
  - genewitch 3y ago
    In 2011 I worked at a company that made $11,000 an hour on web ads. Showing them, not selling them. They made money selling ads too, but I know that just ads on their sites pulled $11k an hour, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. If I remember correctly it was only a quarter of a billion unique visitors a month as well, back then. And believe me when I say I see their stuff mentioned on HN at least a couple of times a week, you've used their sites.
  - menus 3y ago
    > While the others also have ad revenue streams, they neither depend on it nor is it their biggest source of revenue. as of yet Pull up a screenshot of the iPad App Store home page from 2 years ago and look at it today. First thing you see is an ad. Gambling ads are "paused" for now. [1] [1] https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/26/23425637/apple-pauses-gambling-ads-developer-outcry https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/26/23425637/apple-pauses-ga... Apple Maps expected to show ads this year [2] [2] https://appleinsider.com/articles/22/08/21/apple-maps-could-serve-advertising-to-users-in-2023 https://appleinsider.com/articles/22/08/21/apple-maps-could-...
    - jdlshore 3y ago
      Your [2] reference is an article about rumors and speculation.
      - sebastien_b 3y ago
        [dead]
      - menus 3y ago
        > expected yes that what rumors/speculation is. I have little doubt of it not turning out to be true.
- hakfoo 3y ago
  The risk for the ad-based business model is on the buy side. Digital "won" because it could generate pretty dashboards to convince people that it was producing better targeting/reach/etc. than traditional spray-and-pray ads. They acted like they had a solution for "I don't know which half of my ad money is wasted." To deliver this, we built a world of trillion-dollar middlemen, the creepy tracking experience, and opaque platforms. So now we can answer that question, but the answer is two-fold: "the wasted part of the ad spend is the cash paying for Mark Zuckerberg's VR hobby and not actually turning into pixels on customer screens" and also "You're now wasting 70% of your ad spend, and it's a bigger total spend than when you were hand-wringing about wasting 50% of it." A lot of the slop in the ad market is low-quality channels feeding off of bottom-feed networks, most of which would be unviable without a large, confusing ad supply chain. Nobody actively goes out to be the unskippable ad that people are accidentally clicking because a crappy mobile game launched it mid-screen in the middle of play, but that sort of garbage is bankrolling a lot of products. I expect the bubbles will pop one day, and we'll see much more direct advertising and a major price reset. A lot of ad-driven products will fold or reposition based on more realistic valuation.
pornel 3y ago
Cable became TV, and now streaming services are becoming cable. In a few years they will be wondering why nobody values their services any more, and are "cutting streaming".

15 points by ecliptik 3y ago

Seems like what doctorow calls “enshitification,” specifically step 2 https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

paulpauper 3y ago

everyone thinks that the future is VR, AI, defi/NFTs, crypto, whatever...it's ads. That is where the tech brainpower is going: either finding new ways to show ads, optimize ads vs. watch time, or bypass ad blockers. Just as slots are the lifeblood of casinos, ads are the lifeblood of big tech. People will tolerate a surprisingly high quantity of ads. TV is still popular and full of ads now, way worse now than it used to be. The biggest realization post-Covid is that youtube had underestimated people's tolerance for ads, so are showing more of them. The dotcom boom of the '90s was correct about the viability ad-supported business models, but were too early: online advertisers were not paying enough, not enough users, not enough bandwidth, and the ads were not optimized. Super-pricey mobile ads, around 2010 and with the popularity of smart phones and 3g/4g speed, changed everything. this is why I am invested in Meta.

andsoitis 3y ago
> Ads are the lifeblood of big tech A bit exaggerated, no? Out of the top 5 big tech companies (Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft) I would only describe it as the lifeblood of Meta and Alphabet. While the others also have ad revenue streams, they neither depend on it nor is it their biggest source of revenue.
- genewitch 3y ago
  In 2011 I worked at a company that made $11,000 an hour on web ads. Showing them, not selling them. They made money selling ads too, but I know that just ads on their sites pulled $11k an hour, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. If I remember correctly it was only a quarter of a billion unique visitors a month as well, back then. And believe me when I say I see their stuff mentioned on HN at least a couple of times a week, you've used their sites.
- menus 3y ago
  > While the others also have ad revenue streams, they neither depend on it nor is it their biggest source of revenue. as of yet Pull up a screenshot of the iPad App Store home page from 2 years ago and look at it today. First thing you see is an ad. Gambling ads are "paused" for now. [1] [1] https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/26/23425637/apple-pauses-gambling-ads-developer-outcry https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/26/23425637/apple-pauses-ga... Apple Maps expected to show ads this year [2] [2] https://appleinsider.com/articles/22/08/21/apple-maps-could-serve-advertising-to-users-in-2023 https://appleinsider.com/articles/22/08/21/apple-maps-could-...
  - jdlshore 3y ago
    Your [2] reference is an article about rumors and speculation.
    - sebastien_b 3y ago
      [dead]
    - menus 3y ago
      > expected yes that what rumors/speculation is. I have little doubt of it not turning out to be true.
hakfoo 3y ago
The risk for the ad-based business model is on the buy side. Digital "won" because it could generate pretty dashboards to convince people that it was producing better targeting/reach/etc. than traditional spray-and-pray ads. They acted like they had a solution for "I don't know which half of my ad money is wasted." To deliver this, we built a world of trillion-dollar middlemen, the creepy tracking experience, and opaque platforms. So now we can answer that question, but the answer is two-fold: "the wasted part of the ad spend is the cash paying for Mark Zuckerberg's VR hobby and not actually turning into pixels on customer screens" and also "You're now wasting 70% of your ad spend, and it's a bigger total spend than when you were hand-wringing about wasting 50% of it." A lot of the slop in the ad market is low-quality channels feeding off of bottom-feed networks, most of which would be unviable without a large, confusing ad supply chain. Nobody actively goes out to be the unskippable ad that people are accidentally clicking because a crappy mobile game launched it mid-screen in the middle of play, but that sort of garbage is bankrolling a lot of products. I expect the bubbles will pop one day, and we'll see much more direct advertising and a major price reset. A lot of ad-driven products will fold or reposition based on more realistic valuation.

pornel 3y ago

Cable became TV, and now streaming services are becoming cable. In a few years they will be wondering why nobody values their services any more, and are "cutting streaming".