this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2023

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To the surprise of no one, Google is being accused of abusing its power with ads (www.theregister.com)

submitted 1 year ago by ICastFist@programming.dev to c/technology

14 comments fedilink hide all child comments

TLDR of the article:

Google is showing ads outside of YT, in those side players that everyone hates while they just want to read articles, but counting them as normal views.

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[–] taanegl 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

At the same time, YouTube the best income source for content creators. Insta and TikTok maybe giving lots of money to certain influencers, but YouTube has consistently been an income source and revenue generator for content creators.

The bigger question is how do you create a federated revenue generator, be it ads, subscription or donations.

[–] ICastFist@programming.dev 5 points 1 year ago

Video streaming/on demand is a HUGE bandwidth hog. Peertube exists and has several instances, but maintaining them is expensive. Most give a couble of GB allotment to users, and depending on how much you watch, you can see that fly in a day (or 1h, if any is crazy enough to allow 1440p or larger videos)

With federation, each place has to deal with its own budget. More populated instances are more likely to experiment with ads to help pay the hosting costs, thanks to the bigger audience. For niche stuff, this federation might also prove useful, as you can more easily find and target niche communities, like posting an ad for miniatures on a /wargaming community.

[–] CreativeTensors 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Maybe a singular high visibility charity that diverts money to registered instances based on need? The downside is that it's placing too much power in the hands of one entity which one day might go corrupt. There's also no guarantee that it would get enough donations to keep everyone afloat.

Clearly the thought requires refining. I would hope if something like this one day existed it would also point people towards charities that deal with things like food scarcity in impoverished areas or environmental preservation as well.

[–] rimorso@feddit.it 11 points 1 year ago

shocked Pikachu face

[–] Rentlar 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Jammi said the lack of visibility into the buying and selling of ads will make it difficult for marketers to evaluate what's going on.

"The ad industry has allowed Google to take near total control of their ads, and that's given way to a major accountability problem," she said.

Sucks to suck, advertisers. The whole ad business is made around secret metrics and analytics, now Google holds the cards and you're upset. And as a bonus you get to deal with Google's half-automated, half-helpful support (you can guess which half is helpful).

We need more openness and transparency across the board in all digital industries, that will require a sacrifice of potential profit from digital ad companies too.

As for what normal users should do for ad businesses? Fuck 'em, use browser extensions like AdNauseam to obfuscate the data companies collect from you and help drive digital ad companies out of business.

[–] greenskye 2 points 1 year ago

Google enticed users with extremely minimal ads so we all went there. Marketers now couldn't really advertise anywhere else, so they all went to google as well. Now that everyone's on board, google starts the enshittificaiton process. Rinse and repeat.

[–] HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

But how does that work with the bidding system YouTube uses for ads? It is my understanding that YouTube gets such good revenue because it can provide pretty good targeted audiences. How does that work off of the platform?

[–] ICastFist@programming.dev 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

because it can provide pretty good targeted audiences

Prolly not as good as they claim. That or, when off platform, they just show whatever and claim it was a view.

[–] Isildun 1 points 1 year ago

If they know who you are on the platform they won’t stop knowing who you are off-platform. As a really basic example, browser cookies make cross-site tracking easy (there are other more effective methods of tracking like fingerprinting or behavioral analysis too).

Plus, the average user is logged into Chrome. They don’t even need to track you in that case — you gave your info to them!

[–] carved_beats@waveform.social 2 points 1 year ago

I bet million of chromecasts are streaming videos while noone is watching. That is where they play the 10 min plus ads :D

[–] shanghaibebop 1 points 1 year ago

Really? A company that owns an ungodly controlling interest in the ad publishing as well as the advertiser marketplace side of the business is abusing its power?

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