The End of Advertising
backgroundnoise.blog
backgroundnoise.blog
I disagree. They’ve already figured out their business model: taking VC money, giving it to Nvidia, and coming back for more money.
The author mentions users have a revealed preference for ads. This is obviously not true otherwise Adblock wouldn’t exist. Users have a revealed preference for free things. Similarly, companies have a revealed preference for free money.
It’s notable that the successful companies the author mentions (Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google, Meta) all figured out their business models a long time ago.
Of course not. Calling that a “revealed preference” is an abuse of terminology. A revealed preference means both options were equally easy to choose. Ad companies know people don’t like ads which is why they make it difficult to avoid them. In fact if people liked ads then injecting more ads into content should increase user retention.
One example: someone asks about historical multicultural cities, and one was Cordoba during the Muslim rule, and this would be an opportunity for advertisement for holidays in Spain and the user gets the answer: "By the way, did you know you can travel there and see the mosques from that time? See here for a possible travel offer"
I think paid social ads will be less affected by AI than search ads. After all, AI is unlikely to replace human social interactions. That's a good thing. Paid social ads have a much higher incrementality compared to search.
Search ads in comparison are often just the "Google tax".
In my personal life, I've replaced 80% of my previous searches with quick ChatGPT 4 prompts. It gives better answers, faster.
It really depends. As a programmer, sometimes after asking a question, it takes so long to generate an answer that I can look up the answer in the docs before it’s done. Sometimes I need to give it a clarifying query and wait _again_ for it to generate an answer.
A solid 30% of the time it’s wrong about the details of a library. For example, it’s not aware of the latest (from earlier this year) version of the Bevy game engine.
I wouldn't mind quite so much if the advertising was at least interesting and creative. Most of it is just the same regurgitated crapola.
Even that aside, it may just be consumers not caring or wvwn liking ads. I have a friend who refuses to even consider ad blocking because he claims to enjoy ads (bizarre to me, but he did major in digital marketing and has expressed his enjoyment of it).
I don’t need any help spending my money and I don’t appreciate all the psychological influence tactics being weaponized against me in every moment of my existence to get some inane brand buried in my subconscious.
Also the NYTimes.
Although the current online norm is to remove all advertising, afaict making NYTimes & Amazon stick out (like sore thumbs).
I see AI consistently eliminating rational judgments from middle management seat fillers…MDs and scientists inclusive.