JO

[Max Anderson @MaxAnderson]

As someone who has personally spent $500k / mo+ on Google Ads for years, I can tell you with certainty:

This revenue growth in Search is artificial & extremely unhealthy for Google’s business long term

Search volumes are declining as legacy search is being increasingly cannibalized by non-monetized LLM queries

Google’s response?

Manufacture revenue growth via short-sighted, highly extractive, customer-hostile tactics. I.e. charge advertisers more for lower quality clicks, including clicks they do not want and explicitly did not approve Google to charge them for

A few examples to illustrate:

For all of its history until recently, Google operated on a 2nd price auction model

I.e. if you bid $5 CPC and the next highest bidder bids $1 CPC, Google charged you $1.01 for the click (one penny more than the 2nd highest bidder) rather than the $5 you bid

This was a genius move by Google early on as it incentivizes advertisers to input their true maximum willingness to pay rather than trying to play the game of bidding low and constantly adjusting to try to stay just ahead of the next highest bidder while still not paying too much

However recently, Google silently deprecated the 2nd price auction and began charging advertisers as much as their bid and budget caps allow, regardless of what anyone else is bidding

It’s a short-sighted cash grab at the expense of the long term health of the advertiser ecosystem

Making thing worse, Google also recently nerfed keyword targeting precision

Google previously had precise keyword targeting settings that allowed advertisers pick individual search phrases to bid on, defined down to the character w/ exact match or phrase match targeting

This was one of the core features that made search advertising magic, enabling advertisers to run extremely precise campaigns based on exactly what their target customer typed

But now, even if you bid on a specific term or phrase using the strictest exact
-match targeting settings, Google will show your ad across 1000’s of unrelated keywords, labeling them as as “exact match (close variant)”

The definition of “close variant” means whatever they want it to and changes constantly. The result is advertisers get billed for clicks that are totally irrelevant to their business and that their targeting settings explicitly forbid Google from targeting. Google does it anyway and there’s no ability to turn this off

So now exact match is broad match, and broad match is just meaningless spam

This is all very bad for advertisers, but for Google, it allows them to show your ad and bill you for clicks across 1000x more searches that were previously going unmonetized (mainly because they’re garbage queries no one wants)

This is how you grow revenue atop declining search volumes

Lastly, and perhaps most egregiously, Google quietly stopped respecting budget caps by a factor of 2x. For example campaigns we’ve been running for years with $1000 daily budget caps suddenly began spending $2000+ per day

And the extra spend is entirely on the garbage keywords Google arbitrarily throws in as “exact match (close variants)” which have no value to our business, but can’t be turned off

Google offers no refunds nor any recourse for overspend or spend on keywords you explicitly did not target

These are not the actions of a healthy business. These are the actions of company whose core business is in decline but desperately needs to pump quarterly earnings so Wall Street will continue to fund insane capex while hopefully looking through their rapidly deteriorating negative free cash flow

Google operated a benevolent monopoly for the better part of 25 yrs

Meaning the value Google captured from Search was but a small fraction of the value it created, and that spread produced a potential energy that justified expectations of high earnings growth far, far into the future

This is now no longer the case

At the alter of AI capex, Google is sacrificing the golden goose

[Gavin (humanist/acc) @GavMcCracken]

This is so fucking bearish I can't even

[JO @J_Otto8]

@TroncoIndignado 😂😂😂

[DAZN España @DAZN_ES]

¡ES LAMENTABLE! ¡ES UNA VERGÜENZA! 😡😡😡

LA REACCIÓN DE PAREDES TRAS PERDER EL MUNDIAL

#DAZNMundial

[JO @J_Otto8]

@chamath pls anyone knows which tools to use that allow to switch between LLMs Open models… what would be the perfect set up/tools if u were tu crear an AI center “traditional company” - Thanks

[JO @J_Otto8]

@BraedendotTECH mmm same here but wait a minute, how much u paying? cause i get stopped every 2-3 hours… its annoying… or i am paying too little or I am doing something wrong

[حمد بن فهد🧠 @iHamadFahad7]

كونور نيل هو أستاذ في IESE يقضي 25 عام في إثبات أن الحظ ليس مجرد صدفة:
إنه يسافر عبر الأشخاص والمحادثات.

كشف عن 7 طرق لمضاعفة الحظ الذي يصل إلى حياتك:

1/ تعرّف على شخص جديد كل أسبوع.

[Spencer Hakimian @SpencerHakimian]

NEW: Trump’s approval rating hits 28%. The lowest for any president in U.S. history.

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

@iam_smx *trillioniare

[JO @J_Otto8]

@blondesnmoney @leveragedbets sorry guys but why you think there is something cooking here? I don’t see anything …. however trying to trade this stock

[JO @J_Otto8]

@fivepointscap nah… It’s just they we live in times when AI disruption it’s and will be massive at its highs and the likely hood of any tech company/cryptography been disrupted is VERY HIGH… I wouldn’t touch any crypto … it can do a -50% any moment - DO YOURSELF A FAVOUR AND STAY AWAY

[JO @J_Otto8]

@irbezek @ysl_mask what could be the catalyst here? Valuation check but we need a catalyst….

[JO @J_Otto8]

@fivepointscap its dirty cheap, that’s it - Buy and hold

[JO @J_Otto8]

@tomwesleyson @porta253 are u aware of shareholder PE sponsor level financing? thais the key here I think… happy to hear your thoughts

[JO @J_Otto8]

@contrarian8888 @SFarringtonBKC @BlessYourGrind when is time to buy? Wait for PE out?

[JO @J_Otto8]

@irbezek @P_Remarks do u know the company well? Looks good BUT PE exiting is not over + management not great … do i have an opinion?

[DZ @dyz_ob]

$BABA : T-Mall Launches AI-Powered Home Decoration Platform.

[JO @J_Otto8]

@alfie989898980 nothing yet

[JO @J_Otto8]

@YBernard29979 earnings out? where can i follow

[Jaisito @JaisitoL]

Un astronauta puede quedar atrapado eternamente en el vacío si no alcanza una superficie para impulsarse.