The New Mind Control – The internet has spawned subtle forms of influence

Re:The New Mind Control – The internet has spawned subtle fo... by CuriouslyC on Wednesday March 09, 2016 @10:47PM (#11257284)

The ads you see for a given search are highly likely to be profitable (since it is so easy to track and manage). That means people are clicking on those links, and a reasonable fraction of those clicks are being converted. From this, I would like to posit that the profitability of an ad is directly related to the product or service's relevance/value to the user (barring deceptive advertising).

Lets also assume that people buying the ads are willing to increase their ad bid until the cost per acquisition approaches equilibrium with the expected lifetime value. Over time, this should result in only the most profitable ads being displayed. This implies that only the most valuable/relevant ads are being displayed, given the point previously posited.

Thus, over the long term, assuming a fairly efficient market and some restriction on deceptive advertising, the ads can be thought of as an alternate form of result, with a very direct, user-centric ranking metric.

Would it be more palatable if the SERPs were divided into two columns, one being "web search results" and the other being clearly labeled "product/service search results"?

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Re:The New Mind Control – The internet has spawned subtle fo... by spyder on Thursday March 10, 2016 @01:23AM (#11257635)

Just because a product or service is profitable it doesn't mean it's a good product or it's not a scam, and in the case of Google results the companies can make the honest reviews of the product rank lower or basically hide them in the second page of results with their paid ads, which is making it harder for the consumers to figure out the real quality of the product before buying. Of course not every organic result is honest but ads can make it worse.

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