Re:Tech’s defiance of economic gravity came to an abrupt end
by FormerBandmate on Monday December 26, 2022 @02:39PM
(#34141015)
> The dark side of this is how your business can suddenly disappear from view if you stop buying into the Web-Ad-Hive-Mind. That's way worse than the coupon guy hanging outside the front door - that's more like someone in fake construction vests putting up cones around your parking lot.
Soooo… ads provide substantial value to businesses?
Re:Tech’s defiance of economic gravity came to an abrupt end
by EGreg on Monday December 26, 2022 @03:22PM
(#34141430)
In the same way a protection racket provides substantial value to them as well. But only if the platforms mess with their rankings on organic listings and ratings depending on how they pay for ads.
Yelp likes to do that, for instance. Alternatives to ads include:
Referrals / word of mouth
Organic rankings
In a way, ads are similar to speculators pumping a token they think will eventually justify the hype by recouping the speculative spend. There are diminishing returns the bigger the ad spend gets.
The only difference is that there is no secondary market to keep reselling ads and scalping them higher — or is there? But there is certainly the element of a large supply of greater fools to try out ad spend on various speculative ventures.
It's sort of like the difference between coupons in the local paper, versus coupons that your ad man hands out next to the front door of your business. Everyone who gets a coupon was coming here anyway.
The dark side of this is how your business can suddenly disappear from view if you stop buying into the Web-Ad-Hive-Mind. That's way worse than the coupon guy hanging outside the front door - that's more like someone in fake construction vests putting up cones around your parking lot.
[1] Giving them something that looks like magic powers to individual businesses, particularly those that aren't particularly computer savvy. "Holy smokes!! 95% of the people who Google reaches went to my pizza place! They must be soooooo good at convincing people my pizza's the best!"