Self-serve ads and the rise of DIY advertising

Second, I’m reflecting on a point former Netscape CEO Jim Barksdale famously made in 1995: “There are only two ways to make money in business: bundling and unbundling.” I think we’re burnt out by the fragmentation that the D2C era brought to everything. After subscribing to tons of hyper-niche content over the years, the idea of a couple brands we ... See more

Once upon a time, the Internet was predicated on user-generated content. The hope was that ordinary people would take advantage of the Web’s low barrier for publishing to post great things, motivated simply by the joy of open communication. But then ad sales came into play.

That business model is still what most of the Internet relies on today. Rev... See more

The distribution channels that underpinned the rise of today’s Internet giants have dried up. Google, Facebook, and Amazon serve as a triopoly that dominates online advertising. The three accounted for 90% of US digital advertising in 2020, up from 80% in 2019. The arbitrage that once existed on these platforms has more or less disappeared and CPMs... See more

The difference in margin between e-commerce and advertising has become a much bigger story than Amazon: everyone from Uber to Walmart to Instacart is pushing into ‘merchant media’, and hiring at scale