✳flâneur — a map of the web's best reading

Why The Answer Is So Often Ads

thediff.co · 68 words · saved by 1 readers

Of the ten largest companies in the world by market capitalization, two, Alphabet and Meta, are primarily in the business of selling ads. Two others, Microsoft and Amazon, have significant ad businesses that are meaningful contributors to long-term growth assumptions. And now Apple, the largest company in the world by market cap, is also experimenting with ads ($). That should be surprising. Over the last century, ad spending has typically fluctuated in a surprisingly narrow range of 1.0% to 1.4% of GDP. Total war and financial crises are the only events that seem to push it to the lower end of that range, whereas the invention (or perfection) of radio, television, direct response mailings, classifieds, cable TV, online display ads, in-feed ads, interstitials, search, influencer marketing, and even newsletter ads have somehow not pushed that number up much. This isn’t the case for other industries; the consumer price index in the 1930s was 35% food and 11% apparel, compared to 13.5% fo

Why The Answer Is So Often Ads Why The Answer Is So Often Ads Plus! Strategic Shutdowns; Verification, Ads, and Membership; The China Cap Table; Very Long-Term Investing; Branding a Bank; Diff Jobs 24th April 2023 Byrne Hobart Contents This post is for subscribers only Subscribe now Already have an account? Sign in Share this edition! Join 50,000+ industry professionals and curious generalists by subscribing to The Diff.

Explore this link on the map →

related reading