It's about ads on the mobile services - maps and web. Anyone who's got a smartphone or iphone has discovered the usefulness of such mobile apps. That's where the ads come in. The voice part - that's pretty easy, actually. Voice can probably be subsidized by a robust mobile ad platform that does not get in the way of the utility applications on such a device.
You know, you can pay $5 CPM subscription to Slashdot to remove those ads, instead of using an ad blocker. Then you could be supporting a site that has given you what appears to be lots of value based on your profile.
Are you doing that? Or are you just scrubbing out the one way Slashdot has of recouping the costs of providing you with this service?
Actually, if Google dries up, it will be because their traffic dried up. If you have enough traffic, you can make money with advertising, period. Google makes a ton of money because Google gets a ton of AdSense/AdWords impressions across the web.
Google traffic can dry up two ways: First, people could stop using Google Search, or Gmail, or Google Personalized Homepage, etc., in favor of alternatives. That would hurt. But even worse, advertisers and publishers could move away from AdSense or AdWords to alternate platforms. That would hurt a lot more.
You miss his point. Forum, blog, whatever - the key fact is Slashdot is mostly user-submitted links to professional content, written by professional writers at those very publications that advertisers are leaving.
There are 19 stories on the homepage of my Slashdot.
1 links to an open source project. 4 link to tech or other blogs. 3 link to university press releases. 11 link to professional publications covering science or technology.
Forbes.com, NYTimes.com, ZDNet, Reuters, MSNBC, Salon, The Register, Anchorage Daily News, Network World.... This is the pattern I'd argue you can find on Digg, Reddit, and, in fact, most blogs.
If you gleefully celebrate the demise of those sorts of sites' technology coverage, what are you going to link to?
Last time I talked with Tim Westerbrook (admittedly, a year ago), he said that about 10% of Pandora user sessions ended with a purchase. I found that incredible. Well, the industry can kiss those sales goodbye, as I guess Pandora will be hit hard by this.
So, what's the business model for all this great online stuff we like so much, if not ads? Really, for all the people who hate ads so much and feel they are vile, you do realize that it's either pay for content, or view ad-supported content, right?
Seriously - what's the end game if more and more people start blocking ads?
I can give you a hint: if the ration of ad blockers starts to rise, publishers will have to get inventive to recoup advertising revenue to support their operations. That means more annoying interstitials, more advertorials and more advertising masquerading as content.
It costs lots of money to run popular sites, and despite what I'm sure a legion of folks are going to say, people simply do not pay for content online in large enough numbers.
Google doesn't really have the technology DoubleClick has. DFP and DFA are a whole different class of advertising tools. What they've done here is take the lead in publisher-side display ad serving and agency ad distribution, to complement their lead in search/text-based advertising.
Smart move, really. Except that most DFP customers are major publishers like NYTimes and CNN. They view Google as competition. I doubt they'll be very happy with their competition owning their ad server.
There's quite a few enterprise ad servers out there and switching is relatively easy. It'll be interesting to see how much of the DFP customer base Google can keep. If they manage to keep most of those major publishers, I suspect this will be one of their smartest business moves yet.
If they let them all get away to Zedo, Atlas/Accipiter, 24/7, Helios or one of the few other enterprise ad servers, they're screwed. The agencies will follow. With Atlas' purchase of Accipiter this year, there's now a potentially real competitor to DoubleClick's DFA/DFP industry lock. Quick and tight integration between Atlas for agencies and Accipiter for publishers could absorb much of DoubleClick's business before Google even knows what happened.
If I was in charge of Atlas, I'd be contacting the folks at 24/7 and Zedo and anyone else serving ads at scale, and lock up tight integration between Atlas' agency tools and those ad servers.
You and the 10% or so of the Internet audience that block ads don't make anyone in advertising nervous - you're the niche that wouldn't click on the banner anyway. I manage ad ops for a decent sized publisher with a very savvy audience and a higher than normal Firefox userbase, and about 11% of our sessions are blocking ads. Easy enough to compare and get a good estimate. Interestingly, over the past year the percentage has trended down a little, from 13%.
Axim x50, bought on Ebay a year or so ago for under $300.
1. PIM, of course. Synchs with Outlook, keeps my home and work computers in synch.
2. Audiobooks. 1GB CF card and an FM modulator, and I can listen to audio anywhere, anytime. Great for car rides.
3. eBooks. I carry a few dozen and read when time allows. Great for reading at night without bothering the girlfriend, too.
4. GPS. Cheap CF card, store my maps on the SD. A powered mount for the car.
5. Net access in a pinch. Via a cable to my cell, I can use VNC or Terminal Services to check on a server, log into home to check email, check work email, or just surf a little.
I'm debating upgrading to a VGA Axim with BT and Wifi, or getting the iPaq Smartphone version. In any case, it's a valuable tool for me.
Take driving directions as an example. You could ask five different people how to get to a store and you will get five different answers.
Here's the real issue. You need directions to an intersection. You see five people standing on the corner:
1. A young boy, about 15. 2. An elderly lady carrying groceries. 3. A mime. 4. A police officer. 5. A cab driver.
Who do you ask? In your model, it sounds like the proper response is to ask all five, since experts don't exist and each answers helps us explore the world. But in reality, I'm betting you'd ask the cop or the cabby, because you'd know either of them is far more likely to know the area and be able to provide concise directions.
Are they "Navigation Experts"? Heck no. Are the others able to give good directions? Probably. But, you defer to them, because they have a lot more working knowledge.
That's all Sanger is saying. Defer politely to those with working knowledge.
Then you'll see how fun it is to be injected with cancer and grow tumors the size of a baseball. I wonder if the fact that the scientists aren't laughing at you will be some comfort to you then?
And what if you mother, or daughter, could be saved by making that tumor on the rat? Who's more important? That rat? Or your mother?
Put the decision in context please. Tell me you HONESTLY believe your loved ones are worth less than some discomfort to a rat. Because that's really what it comes down to, whether you like it or not.
In nature, animals use their environment and other animals to survive. And they aren't nice about it; it's just the business of staying alive. By doing testing as humanely as possible to advance our knowledge and thus, survival possibilities, we are doing nothing worse than nature itself does.
Back in Air Warrior on GEnie in the 1980s, when it was $6 an hour to play a real online graphical flightsim against other people on an Amiga or Mac, a very popular player named Scav died. I think that was the first organized Missing Man flight in online flight sims. But since then in the various spinoffs in the genre, there have been many.
Slashdot Mirror
It's about ads on the mobile services - maps and web. Anyone who's got a smartphone or iphone has discovered the usefulness of such mobile apps. That's where the ads come in. The voice part - that's pretty easy, actually. Voice can probably be subsidized by a robust mobile ad platform that does not get in the way of the utility applications on such a device.
You know, you can pay $5 CPM subscription to Slashdot to remove those ads, instead of using an ad blocker. Then you could be supporting a site that has given you what appears to be lots of value based on your profile.
Are you doing that? Or are you just scrubbing out the one way Slashdot has of recouping the costs of providing you with this service?
Actually, if Google dries up, it will be because their traffic dried up. If you have enough traffic, you can make money with advertising, period. Google makes a ton of money because Google gets a ton of AdSense/AdWords impressions across the web.
Google traffic can dry up two ways: First, people could stop using Google Search, or Gmail, or Google Personalized Homepage, etc., in favor of alternatives. That would hurt. But even worse, advertisers and publishers could move away from AdSense or AdWords to alternate platforms. That would hurt a lot more.
You miss his point. Forum, blog, whatever - the key fact is Slashdot is mostly user-submitted links to professional content, written by professional writers at those very publications that advertisers are leaving.
There are 19 stories on the homepage of my Slashdot.
1 links to an open source project.
4 link to tech or other blogs.
3 link to university press releases.
11 link to professional publications covering science or technology.
Forbes.com, NYTimes.com, ZDNet, Reuters, MSNBC, Salon, The Register, Anchorage Daily News, Network World.... This is the pattern I'd argue you can find on Digg, Reddit, and, in fact, most blogs.
If you gleefully celebrate the demise of those sorts of sites' technology coverage, what are you going to link to?
Last time I talked with Tim Westerbrook (admittedly, a year ago), he said that about 10% of Pandora user sessions ended with a purchase. I found that incredible. Well, the industry can kiss those sales goodbye, as I guess Pandora will be hit hard by this.
So, what's the business model for all this great online stuff we like so much, if not ads? Really, for all the people who hate ads so much and feel they are vile, you do realize that it's either pay for content, or view ad-supported content, right?
Seriously - what's the end game if more and more people start blocking ads?
I can give you a hint: if the ration of ad blockers starts to rise, publishers will have to get inventive to recoup advertising revenue to support their operations. That means more annoying interstitials, more advertorials and more advertising masquerading as content.
It costs lots of money to run popular sites, and despite what I'm sure a legion of folks are going to say, people simply do not pay for content online in large enough numbers.
Google doesn't really have the technology DoubleClick has. DFP and DFA are a whole different class of advertising tools. What they've done here is take the lead in publisher-side display ad serving and agency ad distribution, to complement their lead in search/text-based advertising.
Smart move, really. Except that most DFP customers are major publishers like NYTimes and CNN. They view Google as competition. I doubt they'll be very happy with their competition owning their ad server.
There's quite a few enterprise ad servers out there and switching is relatively easy. It'll be interesting to see how much of the DFP customer base Google can keep. If they manage to keep most of those major publishers, I suspect this will be one of their smartest business moves yet.
If they let them all get away to Zedo, Atlas/Accipiter, 24/7, Helios or one of the few other enterprise ad servers, they're screwed. The agencies will follow. With Atlas' purchase of Accipiter this year, there's now a potentially real competitor to DoubleClick's DFA/DFP industry lock. Quick and tight integration between Atlas for agencies and Accipiter for publishers could absorb much of DoubleClick's business before Google even knows what happened.
If I was in charge of Atlas, I'd be contacting the folks at 24/7 and Zedo and anyone else serving ads at scale, and lock up tight integration between Atlas' agency tools and those ad servers.
You and the 10% or so of the Internet audience that block ads don't make anyone in advertising nervous - you're the niche that wouldn't click on the banner anyway. I manage ad ops for a decent sized publisher with a very savvy audience and a higher than normal Firefox userbase, and about 11% of our sessions are blocking ads. Easy enough to compare and get a good estimate. Interestingly, over the past year the percentage has trended down a little, from 13%.
Perhaps you'll recall Google has an app for Email, and a coming app for Calendaring, and a portal called Fusion, and a personalized News product?
Can you say "Add my modules to my page"?
Axim x50, bought on Ebay a year or so ago for under $300.
1. PIM, of course. Synchs with Outlook, keeps my home and work computers in synch.
2. Audiobooks. 1GB CF card and an FM modulator, and I can listen to audio anywhere, anytime. Great for car rides.
3. eBooks. I carry a few dozen and read when time allows. Great for reading at night without bothering the girlfriend, too.
4. GPS. Cheap CF card, store my maps on the SD. A powered mount for the car.
5. Net access in a pinch. Via a cable to my cell, I can use VNC or Terminal Services to check on a server, log into home to check email, check work email, or just surf a little.
I'm debating upgrading to a VGA Axim with BT and Wifi, or getting the iPaq Smartphone version. In any case, it's a valuable tool for me.
Take driving directions as an example. You could ask five different people how to get to a store and you will get five different answers.
Here's the real issue. You need directions to an intersection. You see five people standing on the corner:
1. A young boy, about 15.
2. An elderly lady carrying groceries.
3. A mime.
4. A police officer.
5. A cab driver.
Who do you ask? In your model, it sounds like the proper response is to ask all five, since experts don't exist and each answers helps us explore the world. But in reality, I'm betting you'd ask the cop or the cabby, because you'd know either of them is far more likely to know the area and be able to provide concise directions.
Are they "Navigation Experts"? Heck no. Are the others able to give good directions? Probably. But, you defer to them, because they have a lot more working knowledge.
That's all Sanger is saying. Defer politely to those with working knowledge.
Then you'll see how fun it is to be injected with cancer and grow tumors the size of a baseball. I wonder if the fact that the scientists aren't laughing at you will be some comfort to you then?
And what if you mother, or daughter, could be saved by making that tumor on the rat? Who's more important? That rat? Or your mother?
Put the decision in context please. Tell me you HONESTLY believe your loved ones are worth less than some discomfort to a rat. Because that's really what it comes down to, whether you like it or not.
In nature, animals use their environment and other animals to survive. And they aren't nice about it; it's just the business of staying alive. By doing testing as humanely as possible to advance our knowledge and thus, survival possibilities, we are doing nothing worse than nature itself does.
Back in Air Warrior on GEnie in the 1980s, when it was $6 an hour to play a real online graphical flightsim against other people on an Amiga or Mac, a very popular player named Scav died. I think that was the first organized Missing Man flight in online flight sims. But since then in the various spinoffs in the genre, there have been many.