3 ms·

Online Ads Are About to Get Even Worse

6 points by jruohonen 3y ago

jruohonen 3y ago
So the reality of this "mind-control": "That’s a problem, because digital ads are terrible. Users hate them, they’re easily exploited in fraud schemes, and they encourage controversial business practices such as tracking. They also might not work very well: Studies suggest that most users ignore them, and roughly a third of display-ad clicks are believed to be accidental." Also the author shares the common sentiment that the future will be about garbage: "In the ChatGPT era, we face a future of low quality content automatically churned out, itself 'read' only by other algorithms as they train themselves up and by bots generating fraudulent ad clicks—a 'gray goo' internet created by algorithms, for algorithms, and shunned by everyone with a pulse. Ads already make the internet less usable; the effect will only be magnified as we’re forced to wade through the sludge." Also the power grab is there: "So-called artificial-intelligence search, powered by large language models such as GPT-4, will likely make that conflict even more intense, as Bing and Google allow AI assistants to present information from across the web on their own sites, giving users even less reason to click through to publishers." But who knows: "The AI monkey wrench is being thrown into the machinery right as regulators are taking a hard look at the digital-ad industry. Google is facing an existential antitrust lawsuit against its advertising business, led by the Department of Justice and joined by a coalition of 17 states." A good reminder that corporate empires are not immortal: "The tech companies most hooked on the ad industry are left to hope that this time is different. Advertising was the engine that propelled them to global prominence and unbelievable wealth. Now they’re left wondering what to do as they feel the engine sputtering. Do they restart it, or do they accept that they’re destined to spend their future in a state of stagnation?"
brucethemoose2 3y ago
My pet theory: we are in an ad bubble. Its really not as effective as Google/Facebook and such are telling their customers. And I think generative AI is going to finally pop it.

6 points by jruohonen 3y ago

So the reality of this "mind-control": "That’s a problem, because digital ads are terrible. Users hate them, they’re easily exploited in fraud schemes, and they encourage controversial business practices such as tracking. They also might not work very well: Studies suggest that most users ignore them, and roughly a third of display-ad clicks are believed to be accidental." Also the author shares the common sentiment that the future will be about garbage: "In the ChatGPT era, we face a future of low quality content automatically churned out, itself 'read' only by other algorithms as they train themselves up and by bots generating fraudulent ad clicks—a 'gray goo' internet created by algorithms, for algorithms, and shunned by everyone with a pulse. Ads already make the internet less usable; the effect will only be magnified as we’re forced to wade through the sludge." Also the power grab is there: "So-called artificial-intelligence search, powered by large language models such as GPT-4, will likely make that conflict even more intense, as Bing and Google allow AI assistants to present information from across the web on their own sites, giving users even less reason to click through to publishers." But who knows: "The AI monkey wrench is being thrown into the machinery right as regulators are taking a hard look at the digital-ad industry. Google is facing an existential antitrust lawsuit against its advertising business, led by the Department of Justice and joined by a coalition of 17 states." A good reminder that corporate empires are not immortal: "The tech companies most hooked on the ad industry are left to hope that this time is different. Advertising was the engine that propelled them to global prominence and unbelievable wealth. Now they’re left wondering what to do as they feel the engine sputtering. Do they restart it, or do they accept that they’re destined to spend their future in a state of stagnation?"

brucethemoose2 3y ago

My pet theory: we are in an ad bubble. Its really not as effective as Google/Facebook and such are telling their customers. And I think generative AI is going to finally pop it.