“you could chalk some of this up to media strategy focused on search; sites that have been running for years have strong archives and good reputations that cause them to rank high in Google search results. Someone looking for a movie review will see, say, The A.V. Club pop up high in their Google results and click to the page. That’s as far as the Spanfellers of the world care to think; it doesn’t matter if the review is written by AI or illegibly slathered with ads because the company got its click, which translates into the ad revenue or visitor traffic that looks nice in the spreadsheets that are the only way these media owners actually engage with their own sites.”
What an age we live in!
Can’t wait for online advertising to collapse. Maybe we can get the Internet of the mid 2000s back
This eventually will happen, idk if I would be alive since 98% of the internet run in a google browser engine
Someone still has to pay for the ads, and that someone will eventually notice they’re not getting enough for their money. And sooner than you think:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/feb/28/news-media-europe-google-lawsuit-ad-revenue
The issue is that ads these days are largely less about actually informing people about a product and more about a well-known brand keeping its market dominance. At this point, there’s basically no one who doesn’t know about McDonald’s or Coke but they still advertise heavily because they want to constantly be on people’s minds. They’re not really concerned about a return on their advertising investment as long as they’re still maintaining their position.
So you’re saying Coke execs don’t live by metrics and are ok with throwing money out the window?
No, just that sales is probably not the only metric they’re looking at when buying ads. It’s about maintaining their brand image too.
We saw this with Amazon when a bunch of news articles about their union busting and poor work conditions were breaking. There were tons of ads from Amazon about how much people love working there and how great it is. They knew they needed to influence their public image and advertising is how they do it.
I don’t think portraying the execs as just dumb and the general public as mega brains is accurate…
The execs want to strip out value as profit and take actions to maximise this, they don’t care if it fundamentally tanks the business because as long as they make a profit overall they can just drop the husk that’s left at the end and move onto another business they can bleed dry.
It’s literally the foundation of neoliberal model capitalism as pioneered by the likes of Jack Welch.
“How stupid do they think we are”? The answer is, very stupid. It’s sort of an offshoot of Dunning-Kruger: overestimating their own intelligence leads them to underestimate everyone else’s.
Just more end-stage capitalism enshittification.
You missed “techbro grifter scam” from your list of buzzwords.
Looking forward to my Vice branded bluetooth speaker and Sports Illustrated waste bin.
Sports Illustrated waste bin
Pretty sure that was a standard subscription gift in the 80s
They really think a brand name has value even after you sucked the value out of it. Its not even like trying to buy a good one word domain name because it has no value either, vice.com is worth less than, say gavinmcinnesbuttpl.ug because genericness has no value nowadays.
Vice was a very good and authentic source for a while. I recently just had to tell my friend that it’s not the same thing as it was 5 years ago. He was flabbergasted. I’m heartbroken by the loss personally. The documentary they did sometimes was absolutely fascinating. The one about the Florida heroin addicts that live in the fishing industry was one that comes to mind. Nobody else had stories like they were doing. It’s a damn shame!
Anyways what my point is, not every knows about these takeovers. And the people who suck the life out of them and their reputation are winning.
The book The Iron Heel by Jack London is very illuminating in the 1984 type way but about capitalism. The main character has a few specific speeches that really hit home.
