
The Digital Advertising Duopoly - kernelv
http://avc.com/2017/12/the-digital-advertising-duopoly/
======
shubhamjain
There are only two ways to break the duopoly: create your own massive medium
like Facebook or work with publishers. Having worked in this industry, I think
working with publishers is an impossible battle. The whole publishing world is
rife with fraud and desperate attempts to increase page views.

Most publishers cram their websites with ads. The number of low-content,
click-baity websites is just staggering. Sometimes I wonder how could this
even be a profitable proposition for advertisers. This is one reason why
Google absolutely dominates the space. It has the capability to deal with all
the fraud, calculate the right reward for publishers, and give a meaningful
ROI to the advertiser.

Maybe a new kind of advertisement medium could unseat Google from its
dominance but the way digital advertising works today, it sounds like an
impossible idea.

~~~
rhizome
I'd like to see an industry by which companies or their advertising reps
engage with sites in a subscription-like mechanism for direct advertising.
Cutting out the middleman seems like a logical step in this day and age.

~~~
majani
Subscription to ads would mean a lot of waste in the budget. Very few
advertisers would go for that over CPC/CPA pricing

~~~
rhizome
It's not subscription to ads, it's advertisers subscribing themselves into
sites.

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brndnmtthws
All the more reason we need adblockers and private-by-default browsing. It
worries me that I can't use something like Privoxy on Android without rooting
the device. An alternative would be a good privacy VPN with blocking/filtering
of ads and trackers.

~~~
organsnyder
I've switched to using Firefox Focus as my main Android browser. It provides
ad blocking and privacy features. For apps, I try to avoid ad-supported ones
whenever possible, and am happy to pay for apps that I find useful.

~~~
otp124
Does the focus app block ads on Android Chrome mobile? On iOS it does.

~~~
brndnmtthws
It does not block ads, but it does block ad trackers.

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buro9
Isn't this normal?

Doesn't radio advertising have a similar duopoly? Same for outdoor
advertising?

The internet never delivered disintermediation, it only changed who those
intermediaries were.

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thisisit
The content looks similar to the WSJ article:

[https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-google-facebook-duopoly-
thr...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-google-facebook-duopoly-threatens-
diversity-of-thought-1513642519)

Discussed here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15960606](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15960606)

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herodotus
The problem with subscriptions is not the cost, its the sheer number of them -
and some come up almost accidentally. I pay a lot to my ISP every month. I
would like to see a company that charges me monthly to eliminate all adware by
micro-paying the participating websites for my actual page visits. In fact, if
my ISP added such a service for a fee, I would sign up.

~~~
manigandham
We tried this - there's a lot of political and business issues that basically
mean you can't pull it off unless you're a major player (like Verizon or
Google) already. Selling the data (of which one of the uses is advertising) is
more lucrative than letting users pay direct, and that's before overcoming the
hurdle of most consumers who think that they already pay for "the internet"
including all the content.

Google's has the Google Contributor option [1], but that only applies for ads
via their ad network and not other potential sources. There's also Flattr
which is not as automated but it's now owned by AdBlockPlus crew and has
raised rates so it's not such a transparent and clean system anymore.

1\.
[https://contributor.google.com/v/beta](https://contributor.google.com/v/beta)

2\. [https://flattr.com/](https://flattr.com/)

~~~
rhizome
Forgive me if this is naïve, but how does Joe Random site owner participate in
the selling of data? My impression is that that's an area of commerce with a
pretty closed membership.

I'm not asking in order to do something like this, just that I think it's an
interesting question about exactly who is able to profit from activities that
are somewhat assumed to be occurring everywhere, and not by and within the ad
networks that everybody is using.

~~~
hatmagic456
The only places that buy and sell user data are spammy mailing lists. That's
it.

Browser history predicts almost nothing, anyway. There is no market where user
data is bought and sold, except for spammy mailing lists to other spammy
mailing lists.

~~~
manigandham
That is completely wrong.

There is a vast market for consumer data (which is more than just browsing
history) with everything from credit agencies like Equifax to data brokers
like Axciom to traditional analytics companies like Nielsen and Comscore to
top tech companies like Google, Adobe, Oracle, Salesforce, and others that
have marketing clouds with DMP platforms. It's a massive industry.

------
jasode
_> I don’t think subscriptions are the only answer here, as many do._

 _> We need models that support free consumption of media for many reasons._

If you rule out paid subscriptions to subsidize the freeriders, what options
are left for "free" consumption? Either advertisements or a government-
sponsored system (e.g. citizens taxed to support the BBC tv channels).

If there's a crypto financing option that Fred is hinting at, what would that
look like?

~~~
amoorthy
Any idea why Fred is not a believer in subscriptions?

My hypothesis is subscriptions, for news at least, are all-or-nothing
propositions. But in a world where there's so much content, much of it for
free, we will only want to bypass a paywall for a given site occasionally when
we encounter it.

Why hasn't someone built a variable subscription model that is geared to one's
reading habits?

~~~
nickdandakis
Subscription fatigue, maybe?

The idea of variable subscription models is interesting, especially if the
consumer can see detailed justifications for their bill. I think that's a key
point in battling subscription fatigue.

Software companies water down their financial models to a very simplistic
bill, partly because there's no way of (easily) variably billing consumers of
their software, but also because it's easy to understand.

I know that if I received an easily digestible bill of my monthly Spotify
usage, and was charged more than what I'm currently paying for on my fixed
plan, I'd be ok with it. I also know that if I'm not using Spotify as much for
a specific month, and was charged less than what I normally pay for it, I'd
also be very ok with it!

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CaptSpify
>We need models that support free consumption of media for many reasons.

We have that already. In fact, we've had it for a while. The problem is that
we keep taking something that is already free to distribute, and putting it
behind arbitrary gates. We then think it's perfectly normal to pay the
gatekeepers.

I don't know why we still use this model which hasn't made sense for >10
years.

------
kiwicopple
This is something that I'm exploring in 2018 with a group of people from the
publishing world. Still very early stages, but if you have any further ideas
or solutions then we'd love to hear them:

[https://pollygot.io](https://pollygot.io)

e: link

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username223
These people project that we'll be setting $105 billion on fire for digital
ads by 2019. To put that in perspective, it's more than 10% of what we spend
to provide health care to seniors and poor people via a mostly dysfunctional
health care system: [https://www.hhs.gov/about/budget/fy2017/budget-in-
brief/cms/...](https://www.hhs.gov/about/budget/fy2017/budget-in-
brief/cms/medicare/index.html)

~~~
mlinksva
Solution: tax ads.

~~~
jpadkins
we already do

~~~
mlinksva
I don't know what jurisdiction you're in, but would love a reference.

As far as I know in the U.S. there's a long history of talking about
specifically taxing ads, but very little and brief doing. One overview:
[http://www.taxhistory.org/thp/readings.nsf/ArtWeb/E6C2E18E1E...](http://www.taxhistory.org/thp/readings.nsf/ArtWeb/E6C2E18E1E011AF485257BE400723DFB)

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misterbowfinger
It feels like an obvious revenue stream for content publishers is in education
- specifically, MOOCs. "Content" is really access to interesting information
and storytelling. That'd lend itself well to highly specialized MOOCs that
people would pay for, potentially. (I guess that's not technically a MOOC, but
you know what I mean).

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Abhishek41783
With increment in dollars spent on digital advertising there seems to be a
huge growth potential for online advertising agencies that can create
successful campaigns- those not measured by likes, clicks, taps ... But by
actual sales figures.

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tannhaeuser
All that needed to happen is that the authority responsible for enforcing US
antitrust laws vetoed against the acquisition of DoubleClick by Google and of
Whatsapp by Facebook. Why haven't they?

~~~
jpadkins
both of those acquisitions contribute a small amount to each companies
earnings. There will still be a duopoly without those acquisitions.

------
brucephillips
> I don’t want nor do I expect any governmental response to this market
> failure.

Why is it a failure? Price? Quality? Something else? I'm not convinced this is
a problem.

~~~
f00_
market participants not taking externalities into account. i.e. this
transaction benefits both you and me, but doesn't take into account the effect
of the transaction on the environment/others

~~~
brucephillips
What do externalities have to do with duopolies?

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weeksie
Being against government intervention is naive. If the US did what the EU has
done with allowing people to avoid being tracked the big tech companies would
be nudged toward developing smarter business models. Maybe it's not necessary
but it's foolish to dismiss government out of hand.

Allowing your largest companies to compete over hijacking your public's
attention is precisely the sort of thing that reeks of government failure.

This generation of internet users is a lot more willing to pay for content
than mine was. Gen X's reluctance to spend money online is what created the
attention economy to begin with. Maybe the shift will happen on its own, but
how much damage will we do in the meantime?

~~~
mgraczyk
If the US did what the EU has done, I would probably have to wait another 50
years for products I use every day like \- Google Maps \- Google Speech
Recognition \- Google Photos Search \- Google Home

I'm thankful that my government has allowed innovation to continue. I'm glad
they have represented my interests as a consumer by favoring technological
growth over protection I neither want nor need.

~~~
pimmen
Ever used Skype? Spotify? Trivago? Those are EU tech products many people use
everyday, just goes to show that intervening from time to time doesn't
necessarily mean that we live in some socialist, repressive regime.

You're welcome, by the way.

~~~
blfr
Google offers plenty of minor services but Maps is in a completely different
league than Skype or even Spotify.

YouTube is closer to Spotify but would probably still be impossible without
Google's massive investment. Dailymotion is pretty far behind.

~~~
NicoJuicy
Open street map then ;)

------
malchow
Cofounder of successful mid-tier competitor in this space (www.publir.com).
Can confirm.

------
IBM
>I don’t want nor do I expect any governmental response to this market
failure.

You should want it and it's weird not to expect it because the EU has already
begun.

~~~
nerdponx
Isn't that the role of governments in a healthy economy? To step in when
markets fail?

~~~
alexryan
This is where all corruption originates. One group seeks to use the state to
impose their will on another group. The victimized group, in turn, seeks to
defend itself by bribing the enforcers. Instead of capital flowing to those
who are best able to convert it into the most happiness for the most people,
it flows to those seeking to enrich themselves by pitting people against each
other in order to extract ever larger bribes. The state grows ever more
corrupt in this fashion. It might be wise to refrain from the impulse to use
force long enough to consider alternative ways to remedy the perceived
problem.

~~~
erikpukinskis
> Instead of capital flowing to those who are best able to convert it into the
> most happiness for the most people

This isn’t the natural progression of free market capitalism though. The money
will flow to those who are best able to use it to control the behavior of
their customers spending. Making someone happy is just one way of controlling
their spending, but there are many, many others.

~~~
alexryan
That's an interesting point. Are there any examples of "alternatives ways of
controlling the behavior of their customers spending" which do not result in
the customer feeling motivated to withdraw from the relationship?

~~~
DashRattlesnake
Addiction

