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There's a whole spectrum of user data with varying value to advertisers. Google already rocked search big time and now they're on to the rest of the online advertising budget.

Ad networks (like me!) use demographic, psychographic, and behavioral data to target most display ad campaigns. I have run campaigns specifically sold as "market to Nigerian immigrants living in America" or "moms 25-35 interested in beauty products." And even when not specifically targeting those audiences, one can often find surprising performance pockets from these audience intersections- good for my performance and useful info to bubble back up to the advertiser.

And... guess who's the current biggest display ad platform?

yup: http://www.google.com/doubleclick/

Econ isn't a science. There are schools of economic thought that completely contradict "basic economics" taught in schools today, and you can't possibly prove that one or the other method is correct.

Hence, Economics: the dismal science.

CTR on mobile ads averages around 1%. So you're spot on :)

I am convinced that it is useful. I do it every day :)

Without going into specifics, think of this data as just another signal to use in ad targeting. Maybe users in certain regions are more likely to purchase a product? Maybe men versus women, people who have kids, people in certain income ranges. We ad people use all this info to eek out performance from campaigns.

Google is going for the holy advertising grail with +

I can't find any specific mention of his position on the topic, but I'm guessing parent was referring to 75-year-old Ron Paul

Yes and no.

It's true that algorithmic traders from Wall Street will be let down when they come to RTB trading and see how simple and undeveloped the ad ecosystem is compared to financial services. Arbitrage is still important but not the driving force for advertisers' success. Reach is more important: being able to show ads to more of the users in your targeting segments.

Google made the Admeld move for reach. It's partially a "publisher relationships" play, certainly not the technology, but mostly just the easiest way to get a giant new chunk of RTB volume.

I thought this blog post summed it up well: "It's the QPS, Stupid" http://jaysears.com/2011/06/10/google-admeld-the-need-for-di...

Those who have met Jonathan know that he has a heart of gold. This is a guy who just wants to help those that deserve it. I'll be supporting the Co-op as much as I can and watching closely as this first set of startups grow up.

Keep up the good work!

And see you all at the next H&F meetup...

I don't know, I think you have it the other way around. Content and apps are a means for generating ad revenue- the advertiser is the customer.

Lots of technical value gets created in the process, but as companies like Facebook and Google have grown up, they've realized who their real masters are (not the user). See the recent $400m Admeld acquisition rumor to see this in action with Google.

OTOH Apple gets paid by the consumer. They're a real product company.

As someone who buys regularly from Admeld and Google, this makes a lot of sense to me. Admeld's RTB platform is possibly second in size to Google AdX/GDN. Rolling up all their publishers under the same platform means even more inventory that Google can control.

This is consolidation in the traditional sense- Google is trying to commoditize display inventory and end up as the monopoly provider of display inventory. Interestingly enough, Yahoo! sells a boatload of inventory through Admeld... I'm curious to see what changes in that relationship, and if Yahoo! really is going for more of a content strategy while Google goes for the advertising tech play.

While it was a pretty dumb comment and off topic, the top comment on the TC article got the gist of it: "this is why android is still laggy and fragmented, because google cares about ads more than software quality."

This is a big moment that could potentially affect a lot of people. Some HNers may be considering investing- discussion of this opportunity will probably help with this decision making.

Further there are many parties incented to pump hot stocks so they can profit from the fees and possibly from pump-and-dump: investment banks, current investors, soon-to-be investors, etc. I enjoy hearing both sides of the discussion here, and I do feel bad about people being misinformed and taken advantage of, even if it's ultimately their choice whether they buy in to the bullshit.

The major question: is it bullshit, or not? Sounds like HN is undecided

ad network guy here...

Yes, with retargeting you hit a lot of people that aren't interested in the product, but you also hit a lot of people that are lukewarm to warm leads. We're talking about the difference between, say, .05% CTR running ads in a content category versus .1%+ with retargeting across ad exchanges.

Specifics vary between advertisers: try visiting Shopify and you're going to see their ads 10x+ per day every day for a month... but less aggressive retargeting frequency (1-3x/day) is used all the time.

The important question is: where is the money coming from?

If it's from hedgies flooded with investment from banks, then it's credit driven. In a zero interest rate environment banks are going to be desperate for yield. There's nothing zerohedgey about that, it's just financial system basics.

EDIT: To clarify and put into textbook terms: in a good economic environment, there will be plenty of good projects to put investment dollars into. In a bad economic environment, credit contracts so there are less good projects but also less $s floating around. If you flood the market with credit in a bad environment, the same amount of $s you had in the good economy are chasing far fewer good projects.

Banks need to find yield so they take all the extra credit sitting around and pour it into hedge funds, VCs, etc. Those funds need to put the cash to work and so they pump up hot sectors to get their return. Bubble forms as valuations for companies like Facebook go through the roof. It's driven by the excess credit, ie. stimulus investment dollars that need to find a home.

Regarding "not a credit bubble," where do you think the money to push up these asset prices came from? Cheap money and low rates = financial institutions desperate for yield = pour money into high yield "hot" sectors.

The people purchasing FB and Groupon shares are only a few steps away from the Federal Reserve money fountain. This leads me to believe the bubble (or whatever we want to call it) is credit driven

I've always assumed this kind of psyops has been used by, if not govt agencies, PACs or private entities. Digg commenters in particular.

The author introduces the topic of banks skimming money off the top during good times and receiving bailouts in bad times, but does not make the connection to the real economy.

Huge interventions in the economy do not happen in a vacuum. If capital chases high returns in the financial sector, it does so at the expense of investment in productive industries. If profits are generated by financial institutions leveraging the "privatize profits, socialize losses" system and then paid out to their employees, they are in essence feeding off the taxpayer to pay their bonuses.

Further, wages rise in a sector when the sector is growing: seeing increased profits and/or increased investment. It's natural to see wage stagnation if the financial sector continues to skim off the top of productive industry.

And finally- the prices of education and healthcare mentioned by the author are most definitely tied to loose monetary policy that benefits the financial sector. While some of these costs aren't measured in core inflation, inflation is still happening, the end result being that people make the same but have to pay more to send their kids to school, take care of their health problems, eat food, drive cars...

Happy to test this in the SF community -- looking forward to meeting at least one of you next LunchTree :)

Everything about the signup seems very fluid, up to the final sms confirmation. If you could, keep us updated on stats for number of signups, geo distribution, feedback after the first couple lunches, etc. Good luck!

If you think that Goldman hasn't done their homework, and consulted with their very close buddies at the SEC, then you're crazy. These guys have proven over the past several years in particular that they are the gods of finance, and if there are rules and regulations in their way, they will either find a path around them or convince government officials to craft a new hole instead.

I experienced a text message going to the wrong person just last week, running android 2.2 on my Evo. Completely unacceptable for a communication device, as discussed in the article.

I keep seeing you post this link, and I sign up every time. Can't wait to try it!

Wow.

tl;dr, the reason why he's suing Arrington: Jason doesn't deny saying any of the crazy things about Arrington being a drug addict, feels actions were almost but not quite justified because he got cheated, and btw, you should check out his new conference.

Regardless of the situation, the poster does not seem to be in a stable enough mental state for this kind of experience. While you may have had transformative experiences with these substances, you have to remember that there is a dark side as well. Going into a psychedelic trip with a depressed, lonely mindset could very well amplify that and cause the poster to do something unfortunate.

Maybe a guided MDMA experience would be better, so that the poster can talk through the issues with someone IRL. Still, it's not our place to be "prescribing" drugs to someone who really should be getting some professional opinions.

Ouch, the Google ban stick does not sound fun. An alternative for spidering high-risk avenues like that might be 80legs.com, in essence a legal/opt-in crawling botnet =P I've used them when they were in open beta and the service was free -- now you need to pay, although it's pretty cheap for smallish jobs.