this post was submitted on 06 Aug 2024
404 points (95.3% liked)
Technology
59174 readers
3462 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Pure speculation on the only real way it could have merit:
Sometimes there actually are contracts for minimum spending. This happens with actual physical products in exchange for a better bulk price, and would usually take extraordinary events to breach the contract on the manufacturer's side to break as the purchaser, because it may involve stuff like building up manufacturing capacity. In that context, it's a perfectly legitimate business practice.
The economics of websites are different, but (without direct knowledge of anyone's practices) it's within the realm of plausibility that similar contracts exist on big advertising platforms. It's valuable for larger advertisers to keep price down, and it's valuable for the platforms to have a steady base level of advertising.
If those contracts do exist, then the case might have the potential to be interesting. How badly does a platform have to materially degrade the value of their advertising before advertisers are able to back out of pre-existing deals? (The other option is collusion, but good luck showing cause for that.)