Tim Hwang > Quotes

“the data used in targeting ads are garbage. The algorithms being used to deliver advertising are garbage. Nico concludes that old-school mass marketing, without targeting and audience data, will “create better ROIs in many situations.”4 The whole edifice of online advertising is, in short, bunk.”
― Tim Hwang, Subprime Attention Crisis: Advertising and the Time Bomb at the Heart of the Internet

“In 2017, advertising constituted 87 percent of Google’s total revenue and 98 percent of Facebook’s total revenue”
― Tim Hwang, Subprime Attention Crisis: Advertising and the Time Bomb at the Heart of the Internet

“At its core, advertising is a marketplace for attention. When your eyes breeze over an advertisement as you scroll through your news feeds or read an article, a transaction has occurred. Your attention has been sold by the platform and bought by the advertiser.”
― Tim Hwang, Subprime Attention Crisis: Advertising and the Time Bomb at the Heart of the Internet

“There are good reasons to believe that online advertising inventory is steadily decreasing in value over time. Two forces drive this erosion of value: structural shifts in what people pay attention to, and a massive global economy of fraud in the programmatic advertising marketplace. These trends are hidden by the murkiness of online advertising, as well as by a pattern of bad incentives that encourage ongoing efforts to pump up and hype the market.”
― Tim Hwang, Subprime Attention Crisis: Advertising and the Time Bomb at the Heart of the Internet

“Online advertising is increasingly ignored—or actively resisted—by the public at large. Second, the “attention” that ads do receive is increasingly garbage—the product of a massive, fraudulent economy designed to extract money from advertisers.”
― Tim Hwang, Subprime Attention Crisis: Advertising and the Time Bomb at the Heart of the Internet