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How Stupid Do They Think We Are: Media execs don’t want the sites, they just want the names (aftermath.site)

submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 51 points 8 months ago (2 children)

"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!

[–] [email protected] 28 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Can't wait for online advertising to collapse. Maybe we can get the Internet of the mid 2000s back

[–] [email protected] 13 points 8 months ago (1 children)

This eventually will happen, idk if I would be alive since 98% of the internet run in a google browser engine

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

So you're saying Coke execs don't live by metrics and are ok with throwing money out the window?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 8 months ago

Nothing has changed since the early 90s. With the exception that idiot executives think they're experienced . . IT . . cybers or . . whatever.

There was a few brief shining points where developers actually got rich and did some cool things. But, Big Money got no soul.