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You’re totally right, and that’s why I think this era will fail. Web 2.0 failed because eventually people realized to make money they needed to serve ads, and

by madrox 1y ago

You’re totally right, and that’s why I think this era will fail. Web 2.0 failed because eventually people realized to make money they needed to serve ads, and to do that they needed to own the UI. Making it easy to exfiltrate data meant switching cost was low, too. Can’t have that when you’re trying to squeeze value out of users. Look at the evolution of the twitter API over the 2.0 era. That was entirely motivated by Twitter’s desperate need to make money through ads. Only way we avoid that future is if we figure out new business models, but I doubt that will happen. Ads are too lucrative and people too resistant to pay for things.

calvinmorrison 1y ago
why cant i serve ads thru my mcp?
- vineyardmike 1y ago
  Obviously it’s possible. And just like the early internet ad networks… You can’t guarantee they’ll be shown and interpreted correct by the downstream LLM, you can’t guarantee attribution later when a user makes a purchase, you can’t collect (as much) data on users for targeting, etc The biggest ad networks today (Google, Meta) have strong first party data operations, strong first party attribution techniques, and strong targeting, either through intent (search) or profiles (meta). MCP originated ads really only threaten Google (via intent based ads), and they’re quickly moving I to owning the UX of LLMs, securing their place in this value chain.
- CobrastanJorji 1y ago
  Because then you'd be serving ads to an LLM?
jes5199 1y ago
ads really aren’t all that lucrative, though, they’re just simple. I worked for a company that was trying to figure out an alternative to ad revenue (we failed) and our people did some research and the average internet user ends up being shown (if I remember correctly) like $60/month of ads, total.
- xp84 1y ago
  That’s not surprising and is also so depressing. Imagine what the Internet would be like if there were zero ads and zero of the dark patterns that they essentially force every web site operator to engage in. And all for sixty measly bucks a month that we’d spend in microtransactions or subscriptions or whatever. :(
  - eastbound 1y ago
    It’s an average, you can’t just charge everyone in the world and have an ad-free worldwide internet. About 2 billion of internet users are probably worth 0.60$ pm while 200m are worth 600$ of ads pm.
- madrox 1y ago
  Maybe lucrative isn’t the right word but it’s more profitable than the alternative. Call it simple but there’s only so many ways to monetize people that feel entitled to digital works and refuse to open their wallet.
im3w1l 1y ago
People are willing to pay for AI. Some of this money flow could be diverted to the MCP provider.
- jfim 1y ago
  In practice it'll just mean that each MCP provider will have API tokens and it'll be even harder to lock down spending than AWS. Maybe companies will need to have a company wide system prompt to pretty please don't use the expensive APIs too much.

by madrox 1y ago

calvinmorrison 1y ago

why cant i serve ads thru my mcp?

vineyardmike 1y ago
Obviously it’s possible. And just like the early internet ad networks… You can’t guarantee they’ll be shown and interpreted correct by the downstream LLM, you can’t guarantee attribution later when a user makes a purchase, you can’t collect (as much) data on users for targeting, etc The biggest ad networks today (Google, Meta) have strong first party data operations, strong first party attribution techniques, and strong targeting, either through intent (search) or profiles (meta). MCP originated ads really only threaten Google (via intent based ads), and they’re quickly moving I to owning the UX of LLMs, securing their place in this value chain.
CobrastanJorji 1y ago
Because then you'd be serving ads to an LLM?

jes5199 1y ago

ads really aren’t all that lucrative, though, they’re just simple. I worked for a company that was trying to figure out an alternative to ad revenue (we failed) and our people did some research and the average internet user ends up being shown (if I remember correctly) like $60/month of ads, total.

xp84 1y ago
That’s not surprising and is also so depressing. Imagine what the Internet would be like if there were zero ads and zero of the dark patterns that they essentially force every web site operator to engage in. And all for sixty measly bucks a month that we’d spend in microtransactions or subscriptions or whatever. :(
- eastbound 1y ago
  It’s an average, you can’t just charge everyone in the world and have an ad-free worldwide internet. About 2 billion of internet users are probably worth 0.60$ pm while 200m are worth 600$ of ads pm.
madrox 1y ago
Maybe lucrative isn’t the right word but it’s more profitable than the alternative. Call it simple but there’s only so many ways to monetize people that feel entitled to digital works and refuse to open their wallet.

im3w1l 1y ago

People are willing to pay for AI. Some of this money flow could be diverted to the MCP provider.

jfim 1y ago
In practice it'll just mean that each MCP provider will have API tokens and it'll be even harder to lock down spending than AWS. Maybe companies will need to have a company wide system prompt to pretty please don't use the expensive APIs too much.