all 8 comments

[–]magnora7 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (7 children)

Interesting take. A lot of the valuation of the internet entirely depends on advertising click-through rates. Which they're finding more and more are faked, to make more money. Or just improperly count bot traffic (from search engines cataloging and stuff) as human traffic.

I don't think most advertisers really understand this yet. I wouldn't be surprised if this caused a partial collapse in the internet advertising industry because a lot of the numbers are arbitrarily fluffed up. Also a lot of over-leveraged internet companies are now beginning to collapse, like facebook. It doesn't bode well for reddit's 2020 IPO stock opening.

I think if you combine all that with the student loan crisis, and another real-estate crisis, and a stock market bubble... we could easy see another 2008 crash or worse. I think it's something everyone should be prepared for over the next few years.

[–]danuker 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

I don't think most advertisers really understand this yet I think people serious about advertising will start small and pay attention to their ROI.

"How many $Y did customers give me thanks to $X spent on advertising?"

This, together with advertising on multiple platforms, will let any merchant discover the better platforms.

[–]magnora7 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

"How many $Y did customers give me thanks to $X spent on advertising?"

The problem is, it can be very hard to isolate which people came because of the ad and which came naturally.

[–]danuker 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

It might be hard to implement, but if users are clicking on ads, you can have an URL parameter like "?from=saidit", then track the users via IPs, cookies and/or user agent until they either leave or order something.

Figuring out where the users "leak" away is called "funnel analysis".

[–]Mnemonic 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

There was a case against Facebook fo 'fake'-views on ads some time ago: https://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2019/10/07/facebook-ad-metrics-lawsuit-settlement.html (did a quick search)

In Europe we also have a house-bubble coming: House are way too expensive for starters and a lot of peeps need homes, now the homes are there only too expensive or you have to rent from someone who bought the house just to make a easy buck, while poorly maintaining it and terrorizing they loaners.

For ads you just need an image with a link embedded in it: then I'm fine with it and I won't block em. Local sites (like news, startups etc.) have this setup. No importing weird external js and you can EASILY count when someone clicks your ad with some php link in the ad (click it and use your heaven's gate visitor counter code). No need to track. These kind of ads are also local/related to the site's content, I don't need to know about a vibrator on sale in the USA...

[–]magnora7 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Interesting facebook case, thanks for the link.

Interesting you say Europe is facing a housing bubble too. I think it might just be global this time, especially with all the chinese real estate investments all over the globe. The whole global real-estate economy will probably crash in lockstep, it's much more intertwined than it was even in 2008.

[–]Mnemonic 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

In Europe it's based around wealthy peeps buying up houses and renting them out, just the prices of the rents are getting steeper and byuying a house is also getting steeper because peeps see money in buying a house and renting it out... a vicious capitalistic cycles around something that should be more-or-less ordain to have: housing. The crisis has reached a pint in where school-teachers can't afford to rent homes in cities because of their salary and the rent prices... really wicked. A couple early 30ies, dual-earnings can't buy a house in a city.

[–]magnora7 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

In Europe it's based around wealthy peeps buying up houses and renting them out

Yeah that's happening in the US too. Plus all the people just buying and holding it, with the expectation the value will increase. Treating housing like an investment commodity instead of a place for people to live, is the main problem