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Comment by manigandham | Hacker News Reader

Adtech veteran here. This is week old news, and was expected by the industry for awhile ever since ATT failed to integrate Appnexus properly.

Not sure why this thread has turned into so many off-topic complaints about Microsoft but this acquisition itself makes perfect sense. The duopoly of Google and Facebook has weakened with the changing landscape of mobile devices, tracking protection, and data regulation. Amazon is quickly building their ad business along with Apple and this gives Microsoft a solid leap forward to leverage their growing media inventory and onboard existing clients with a fully functioning demand and supply-side platform.

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Microsoft's evolution into adtech is the natural evolution of industrial capitalism.

In the 19th century, mercantile giants evolved into banks, because after expanding to the limits of their trading turf, that's how they'd get secure, predictable Return On Capital (ROC).

In the 20th century, industrial giants evolved into fintech services, because after expanding to the limits of their markets that's how they'd get ROC.

In the 21st century, the largest software companies seek to evolve into adtech for the same reason.

Some of the largest software companies have always been adtech companies. Google getting into cloud computing is similar to Microsoft expanding into advertising. Software/hardware/internet services all collide into similar end offerings for these megacaps.

> Microsoft's evolution into adtech is the natural evolution of industrial capitalism.

How is advertising synonymous with capitalism? If it were communism or socialism we'd likely just call advertising propaganda, but is there a real difference?

To be clear, even if Microsoft was born in a reality where America was Democratic Socialist, wouldn't they be doing the same thing just a slightly different purpose?

Advertising is becoming a bigger share of the global economy. At the same time, the big players are making up a bigger share of the ad market.

It's not absurd to envision a world in the next 30 years in which advertising is >33% of global GDP - and maybe 2-5 companies control >50% of that market.

sometimes i wonder if we would ever get to a point where we trade, buy and sell in ads

like if i go to a grocery store and forget my wallet, then i can pay for it by watching 10 mins of ads or something...

The math doesn't work. The money to advertise comes from you buying the product. If they pay you enough to actually buy it then the cost of advertising is equal to the price of the product and they make no revenue.

Advertising pays for a lot, but it also doesn't pay that much.

It's also not absurd to imagine a world where advertising is the next internet bubble.

It's not.

You can never say if something is a bubble until after it pops.

On the other hand, I think there's a convincing argument that people are having more and more of their needs and basic wants met. And if you're in the business of selling things - you need to synthesize wants in your customers.

Only 200 years ago, basically everyone on the planet was a peasant. Only 70 years ago, even middle class people in the US and Europe had a laughably low standard of living by today's measures.

Now, in ~60% of the world (the developed world incl. China) - only a couple percent of the population is a dirt poor.

In many ways, it takes more effort to sell people a seventh computer than their first. In other ways, repeat customers are your easiest sales. Still, you usually need to market even to your repeats...

Still, in order to grow - you can't just sell your existing customers the same thing every year. You need to constantly sell them more...

Agreed. Rather than "grow" I'd prefer to look at organizational success through time in terms of evolution.

That being said, there are tons of companies out there that are huge and do no advertising. Word of mouth, relevance to reality, and quality of product win out over the long term.

The next? Online advertising was hit severely in 2008. My adsense income went from paying my mortgage to barely paying for my VPS that year.

Off topic question,

Have you heard about Mediaocean? They are an old adtech company. I have an interview with them but I don't really understand what they do.

They make software to run advertising operations for big agencies and advertisers.

It manages ad campaigns, audiences, billing and finances, workflows, optimization, comps, etc. It integrates with major ad platforms which run the actual ads, and collects performance data from APIs and reports, and puts it all together in a single place for analysis.

Any idea how they are as a company?

People are complaining because they don't want adtech in everything. It has nothing to do with it being old news - it's news until the industry is leashed. Microsoft joining in isn't things getting better, it's things getting worse because it confirms a lot of suspicions people have.

what's adtech in everything? a friend of mine is a salesman for billboard ads. people see it every day if they happens to drive by one of the billboard ad that he sold. does that count as adtech?

Maybe. Does the billboard get in your pocket and follow you around, keeping track of your location? Does it parse your email for metadata? Does it insert itself in between your news feed because you happen to be in its target group? Does it ask you to accept its Terms and Conditions of Billboard Use and its Privacy Policy?

Nope, it just blinds me at night whilst trying to get me to hire an injury lawyer

Other than people making money off of them, I know of no one who is excited by the existence of billboards. In fact, they are usually a source of complaints. (There was some use for them pre-cell phones to find restaurants/gas/lodging during road trips.)

But even there, most people object to the personalized ads and the tech that measures it. People don't seem upset about ads in print magazines (that are tied only into the consumed content) or ads in podcasts.

Billboards are actually not even legal in all 50 states.

> "adtech in everything"

Meaning what? This is technology to deliver advertising.

Where ads are placed has nothing to do with this story, and hasn't changed because of it.

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