Major platforms are starting to realize that people don’t have money to pay for tons of services anymore and the only thing that’s making money is selling customer data to someone else to try and sell THEIR service. That, and a shitload of investor cash to keep the ship afloat with the promise of eventual profitability sometime maybe decades down the line.
But like ships passing in the night, many platforms that relied mainly on that ad revenue are also not happy with the returns they’re making and are making desperate moves to get the last drops of blood out of the turnip that is their user base. You see how this is a problem, right? Even if the whole internet is selling your data, passing it back and forth between companies indefinitely, at some point it should have to result in a sale to be useful.
The online ad industry feels like it’s being sustained by a shared fiction of profitability and spinning the numbers such that you only have to worry about selling to the next fool in the chain. It feels like the whole revenue model of the internet is a house of cards that’ll crumble after a few big reports on its actual profitability, and as soon as faith starts to waver, it’ll just be over.
I’m no economist or anything, so I'm probably talking out of my ass about the details of this situation, but even I see the problem with literally everyone in an industry trying to sell the same product amongst themselves, without any profitable base in actually selling a thing to the consumer.
You can tell these ships are sinking from the increasingly drastic, desperate moves they keep making that make no sense for trying to build a sustainable platform, but make more sense if you're trying to manipulate stock prices, hopefully sell everything so your loss-cutting won't hurt quite as bad, and pass that hot potato one last time before everything crumbles. It'll be wild to see that collapse happen on an industry-wide scale.
In no particular order: the EU's GDPR and data protection laws, iOS limiting tracking by default, the failed pivot to video and economic recession have all made ads less useful.
Plus, we are advertised to everywhere now. Remember when movies had a concessions commercial and then trailers and then a film? Commercials before the show can last longer than previews now.
(reads article) "Well, clearly what we need here is a campaign to convince consumers that a need for food and shelter represents a deep moral failing and also makes them sexually unattractive. I think we're on to a winner."