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Comment by pembrook | Hacker News Reader

Democrat, Republican, or Independent, Google gets rich either way. You can clearly see price per view has gone up dramatically from the historical comparison. $2B in Google ad spend so far this cycle.

Also interesting, the New York Times is the most viewed ad of this election season, having been seen 10M+ times.

It appears the only true winners of US presidential election mania are Google and the Media.

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In the middle of the 2008 Dem primaries (H. Clinton vs Obama) it was obvious it won't be much of a race anymore, Obama was going to clinch it, but the media narrative was still portraying it as one... it made me wonder how much of it came because if the audience thinks it's a race, then they'll tune in, and more eyeballs = better ad sales.

Ah, Allah bless the everlasting Attention Economy!

NFL is a microcosm of american politics. Two opponent teams, each has a trainer, a rich donor, some ideology and millions of fanatics who vote for their team no matter what. It may seem like the goal is to win the game on the stadium, but behind the scenes it's a well calculated auction of advertisements.

Your first sentence is spot on. Your analysis is dead wrong.

I disagree. The point is kinda spot on. Their end goal is to have their team perform the best possible in order to sell out tickets/stadiums/merch and have high ratings from viewership and syndication.

It's about as American as you can get.

In the age of information warfare, ads are a weapon and Google is the modern day Colt. If you sell guns to the North, the South needs more guns from you. If you sell to the criminals, the cops need more guns from you.

Not sure what this is called but it's definitely not "don't be evil"

The term I heard was fence-setters. It's a little off though, becsuse it implies your allegiance changes. Google allegiance is always clearly on money.

The problem is though that what's best for corporations and what's best for Americans don't align.

If you're McDonald's and your goal is to make money, you're not trying to make the best quality burger. You're trying to get crack legal, so you can lace your burgers with it.

Google will always inherently have a bias towards candidates that push a narrative that helps their profits. This is true of all corporations and is the intrinsic danger of allowing them to influence elections.

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