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How does this work? Zuckerberg and investors are getting richer. Who's paying for it? Advertisers? If so, aren't they getting ripped off when bots are generatin

How does this work? Zuckerberg and investors are getting richer. Who's paying for it? Advertisers? If so, aren't they getting ripped off when bots are generating clicks? Why do they stick around? What am I missing?

TheNewsIsHere 2y ago
> Why do they [advertisers] stick around? I work with clients and marketing agencies to host web infrastructure that includes their main site, which is often their only marketing website. (Some clients have multiple marketing sites.) What I see from that is that with respect to small businesses in particular, Facebook and Google advertising platforms are in effect the only games in town metaphorically and somewhat literally. Metaphorically because these two players dominate the online advertising space. “Somewhat literally” because of two things: i) the issue called out here which is that for many people Facebook has become more or less interchangeable with the concept of the Internet; and ii) because when people aren’t using Google, they’re using Facebook, and the “local” nature of Facebook gets laundered into some amount of perceived credibility. In the words of a salesperson I was recently talking to about online advertising: “if you’re not advertising on Facebook, you’re not advertising.” Meta has a perverse incentive here. Everything that drives interactions with and traffic to their platforms creates that much more they can offer in aggregate to advertisers. They’re incentivized to foster interaction (authentic or not) to keep advertisers interested. Advertisers don’t really have much in the way of alternatives because no one else can offer the kind of targeting, analytics, and just plain eyes-on-ads impressions that Meta can provide. Advertisers aren’t interested in creating a competing option because, well, why would they want to do that?

TheNewsIsHere 2y ago

> Why do they [advertisers] stick around? I work with clients and marketing agencies to host web infrastructure that includes their main site, which is often their only marketing website. (Some clients have multiple marketing sites.) What I see from that is that with respect to small businesses in particular, Facebook and Google advertising platforms are in effect the only games in town metaphorically and somewhat literally. Metaphorically because these two players dominate the online advertising space. “Somewhat literally” because of two things: i) the issue called out here which is that for many people Facebook has become more or less interchangeable with the concept of the Internet; and ii) because when people aren’t using Google, they’re using Facebook, and the “local” nature of Facebook gets laundered into some amount of perceived credibility. In the words of a salesperson I was recently talking to about online advertising: “if you’re not advertising on Facebook, you’re not advertising.” Meta has a perverse incentive here. Everything that drives interactions with and traffic to their platforms creates that much more they can offer in aggregate to advertisers. They’re incentivized to foster interaction (authentic or not) to keep advertisers interested. Advertisers don’t really have much in the way of alternatives because no one else can offer the kind of targeting, analytics, and just plain eyes-on-ads impressions that Meta can provide. Advertisers aren’t interested in creating a competing option because, well, why would they want to do that?