ADSN RUNDOWN | How Creators Took Over The Open Web

it's adsn on the beat where the data meets the street james and daniel in your feed breaking down the code you need tech talk ad game and a little ai every week we got the chat on adsn james back rundown uh another excellent episode on its way for listeners i'm daniel you're james let's get right into it uh what are we starting off this week um kick us off james all right we got a great one here from oran john personal friend of yours if i'm not incorrect about it was on the podcast a while back he's killer really yeah don't you like know him from hawaii or something yeah yeah go back and listen to that episode if you're listening right now and you'll hear the origin story yes the origin is just how daniel became friends with a really famous influencer in hawaii um uh he said uh creators and brands can you can now link your ig tiktok and youtube to google search console now to see how your content shows up in search takes two minutes uh was revealing how much how much small long-tail traffic i get on product and location review content in particular this like if ever wanted to know that creators are the new publishers this is clearly like step one in this and this you know this there's also this thing now where the creators are getting their own fast channels you're obviously seeing you're like mr beast and others but uh you know we're going to talk about this later on the pod but like uh our power talks about how the open web has died i think that what's happening is that the creators are the ones who stole it yeah i mean i think the the creators have taken over right and they've just proliferated the the walled garden and they've just taken over and they've just taken over and and we'll talk about that specifically but i think this one is interesting because it's always been these walled gardens and everyone's been keeping kind of the analytics within their own platforms but google can index videos obviously that's good for instagram twitter or x and tiktok etc google can index it now provides some analytics around it um the same way they do traditional websites web pages newsletters everything else this is just more content um within the creator arsenal that they can they can analyze and build off of um but feeding into our next stories uh staying on creators there are two major changes over the past seven days in the creator sphere one is a very recent one that youtube is changing uh the structure of its creator program so actually doubling the number of qualified watch hours before you can start to monetize the number of uh shorts views it's really a crackdown against ai and kind of faceless channels they're really going after you know verified creators original thought and then x separately um rebranded and relaunched what is now their original content rewards program uh it used to be the creator revenue sharing program brock pearson has a really good breakdown here of why this actually is good for creators but very similar kind of cracking down on faceless channels cracking down on channels that were really kind of engagement farming saying you know we're going to do this and really pushing their their followers for engagement and really cracking down on people that aren't bringing either original video original content or original thought so for reposting channels um you know the program doesn't monetize as well for them anymore and so uh you know it's it's two we saw snap do it a while back like i think this is just the new model like people want verified creators yes two two ideas kind of mine one it's funny that you need it's not saying ai slop can't make money but you need to create enough ai slop and given that google sells compute and ai it's kind of funny it's like you must be a like a dedicated slop artist to monetize that's like one thing yeah the other is i don't know uh you know nate lorenzen um two things so you know nate it's pretty like in the x famous now like he's got a bunch of he's had some big hits um but are you aware that he was the one who created the chamath collar meme i did not know he created me i saw all of his memes but i didn't know it originated apparently nate created it originally right and now that's gone like totally parabolic and so nate has been on x i saw this i gotta find this tweet um basically advocating for like derivative revenue from it uh it's it's this looter it's so silly but it uh it i don't know just like it's sort of the beginning i think in some ways it's the beginning of the end i'm so bullish on the social networks but the fact that they got to monetize all this without rev sharing for so long was like an amazing hack that like everyone knew about and then now it's like those days are over well i mean back to your point on like creators of the new publishers like we saw this story play out right publishers uh got free traffic all this stuff in the platforms the algorithms kind of prioritize them and then the rules changed overnight right and like it's kind of same thing happening creators were playing by a set of rules and then the platforms change it but their distribution is locked in which i actually think is a good call out to one of our sponsors beehive which is a huge proponent um and kind of builds all their messaging around own your audience own your distribution and i think this is you know perfect example that leverage these distribution channels but you need to be able to own your audience elsewhere that was not rules change that was not a paid ad but it did no it did come out of like i i think i talked about this one of the weeks but i watched the truman show a couple weeks ago did we talk about this in the podcast or was i telling you i think we did but a good truman show uh you know reference is always welcome truman show is incredible the movie was so awesome but that randomly the movie was so awesome they'll be talking because truman doesn't know yet and then like and they'll be like oh like i could really use like a clean new whatever and then like there's like some like sponsored little piece i think beehive did not pay for that but that it felt it felt paid only because beehive is so good and so aligned to the uh to the outcomes but now it feels paid i do think that the the problem is like where does it end like and i like i really do like the awesome but like you know it's uh at some point they will have to make a choice that ends up benefiting beehive potentially over the creator too so it's like this whole dance of like where does it all go uh it it really just makes me think that if someone we'll talk about this later on but like um there's that uh all-in podcast uh blurb about how starlink basically acts as a subscription service to pay for all of spacex and you know i think it's like these social networks now need some other revenue stream outside of pure ads because the margin on the ads is going to get hit from this like it's only going to get worse than you know at this point yeah um i think that's a good a good place to switch to ari's position which i know you've you and i but certainly you have been advocating for the last 10 years of the open web's dying it's accruing to these walled gardens where attention is you know aggregated that's where attention uh is and ari who i mean is a legend in ad tech has built was at google wrote the literal book called yield um came out this week and kind of raised the white flag and said you know this week finally feels like the open web is dead i you know it coincided with what uh some of the adsn staff referred to as the great flippening in which snapchat's market cap uh exceeded the trade desk once again um i follow the adsn page on linkedin for more on that um and you definitely should great great newsroom i gotta say gotta give that team credit yeah uh but yeah i don't know the open web the open web i don't even know i mean again like to some extent you know it's it's tv it definitely has like value to it i don't know i don't even know i don't even know i don't even value there but i think the the thing i learned the most about watching the open web die like in front of us is that the stock market is really really complicated because like and i had tweeted about this before where it was like it was so obvious that these open web plays were the things you should short but like just because you're right on the stock market doesn't mean you're gonna nail the timing and like you know i feel like i'm like uh what's michael burry like uh you know the big short guy everyone like because he's always calling like the next crash but like first of all he nailed the first one so i'm not like but like yeah he's right eventually probably the market does tank but i think like in this case it was pretty clear and i have nothing against trade desk i think it's a great company and great people but just like the economics of being a dsp i think do not make sense in this new world and um and unfortunately that's you know playing itself out so i mean from an ads perspective i think i wrote about this online where it's just like the supply side i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know what to do with it but i think it's a great company and i think it's a great company and i think it's going to be in a very good spot going forward i think and you'll see a lot more interesting things coming to that side than i think this pure demand side play yeah and i think i mean eric schubert's been talking about this for for years i mean if you i guess google in particular right youtube um just kind of eating kind of the display networks uh lunch over time like you know it was inevitable like we saw the writing on the wall we saw the trend happening in real time we saw companies like where they were headed um so not super surprising probably more surprising that that ari wrote this piece uh to be honest um but yeah i mean it's this is where we are um and i actually do laugh that you know everyone calls ctv the open web i understand the pipes and like the meaning behind it but i think the interaction points on the consumer side could not be more different yes yes i agree with that um okay so now we're moving on to spacex what do we got here from vibe marketer um read it let's hear it okay oh well yeah uh so vibe marketer uh had to say spacex may have built one of the greatest financing loops in tech rockets deploy starlink starlink produces recurring cash that cash then funds more rockets more rockets expand starlink um so the quintessential mckinsey flywheel if you will and you know they they pulled this clip from uh freebird from all in and kind of going down the number of subscribers the quarterly growth and how this is putting them on a path to 30 billion dollars of annual free cash flow um and they kind of joked that you know this is a rocket company built on subscriptions uh it's not i mean you look at the math this is it well and and i think uh to some extent you look at like open ai and some of the stuff they're doing on codex like if you can have a subscription business tied to an ads business right like if you can just have some other ancillary business that can maintain that initial flywheel then i think really interesting things obviously can come out of it i think it's where like again i'm still like an uber bull on on meta but you know they really do have to show that they have i think some sort of secondary revenue stream that can be sustaining outside of ads you know so i i look at i look at open ai i look at like a good clods a little different because they really aren't going after consumer or anthropic at this point but i look at open ai and i'm like wow if you're going to be able to do that you're you really could get codex moving like big time and you can get the consulting businesses that they're basically standing up there and over time they become uh a compute provider which i think is potentially viable then that ads business gets to be really really compelling right they can potentially overpay on the rev share i mean and you'll probably see this with x like it's so now that x is part of spacex and you have this revenue stream they'll probably like if we were sitting there i think we'd be advocating for like 90 10 rev share with creators like we would just like get we just bribe the creators come on you go you go buy you go buy volume and you go you know buy attention yeah until until the whole thing flips in your direction and then you slowly flip it back yeah no and they're doing x money it to have your social network tied to a rocket business and a connectivity business like starlink is pretty interesting if you can align all the pieces which i think that's sort of the key is like does spacex act like a conglomerate or does it act like a unified business it feels like more like a unified business and actually saw oh name his name a friend of ours is on the sales team there i saw him posting on linkedin and he oversees a gaming but he had his gaming clients at um at like starship at starbase but i think it kind of makes sense because you're trying to like sell them ads and saying you guys should use grok for development like you actually could see how you become like a multi-product salesperson with the the you know all the pieces that x has so yes you have a payments provider now you have a telecommunications provider yeah i'm every employee with starlink you know never go down there's something yeah and he's a smart guy i'm curious how much how many things he can sell let's see it's um all right you sent me this one from carl meta talking uh with satya nadela uh about how he views linkedin merging four job titles named product manager designer front end engineer and back end engineer into one and satya kind of gives the example of kind of what that represents for the company now and and how you build that in kind of a new model where that product manager the product manager now does all these four functions and then there's a back-end engineer that connects it and kind of there's someone that focuses on maybe tailoring the ux ui but like you've you front loaded that work for that first person yeah i know we're doing at universal ads certainly but uh we're not at the scale of linkedin so it's interesting to hear a company of that you know that stratosphere the comments kind of like roasted satya this where it's like a bunch of people were like i don't like i think there's like linkedin employees being like i don't think this is actually happening we would know about this and like it's like a little bit of a disconnect but i think it makes sense i mean i mean we obviously are trying to like implement it right now and it like it will eventually work i think it's a different way of doing things but like the days of all these little handoffs and like you know i think that you know there's a little robot inside the computer that you can hand it off to i think it's probably easier for small teams startups that can like maneuver around this to your point of the comments my favorite is everyone being like linkedin maybe should hire them all back because this product is atrocious it was pretty interesting but i think i mean if i were doing a startup today no way i'm hiring those jobs separately yeah like there's not a question and i think anyone anyone trying to enter product now anyone that's you know 20 to 26 you you better have a really good portfolio and position on how you how you operate having all those seats i will say a little personal anecdote i like i have like re vibe coded a bunch of stuff i really only had one product that i thought there's one product i really liked but no one else liked it and then there's one that i built this game called the situation game that like actually some people like really liked playing and i liked it and i didn't like it but then i you know what like who am i to say what people should like if they like this game i'm going to rebuild it so yesterday i started building it again and originally i was going to do it in codex and then it's just codex still kind of sucks it like is it's like awesome for a minute and then just can't get through this so now i switch back to claude and claude is so good but it's so much better i'm rebuilding a game that i vibe coded maybe two months ago and it is so much better now than it was then that got to the point where i got kind of bored i was like this is so stupid i'm just like i'm not even like before you were kind of yelling at it like you know like now it's like one-shotting these things and i'm like make it like robin hood and cnbc had a baby and like does it and it's just it was boring i mean like i'm i think i'll like post a link to it when it's done but it does show you how much like more capacity we have like i like i could if i had i was like with my family throughout the day yesterday like since i was like i'm like i'm like i'm like i'm sneaking into my office building stuff like if i had on just like uninterrupted like i could have built like a thousand things yesterday like it's really crazy elon's building rockets you're building uh situation you have to learn how to build real things because it makes you very clear these digital things are not going to be hard to do that is i mean it is part of the argument that like there is a dopamine hit associated with it and there totally is same thing like i'm like one more before bed like let me get one more answer out let me get one more like update my brain to the site but it is when it gets so good it's kind of just like oh like huh apparently the faa has found the same thing as you know that there was this shortage for faa like air traffic control people and um they went to switch instead to just hire gamers and like the gaming community is like really into air traffic control i guess which kind of makes sense because it is like a coordination thing and it's like almost solved their entire recruiting challenge oh wow yeah interesting um well that to our last story of the day this one coming from oran hoffman um who's former ceo of live ramp flex capital gpf flex capital i mean just a legend um he reposted kind of and maybe this doesn't count for uh x's new creative program for him to monetize but he reposted a claude ai post basically just what states have the highest usage and his comment was was not expecting this for for anyone that's not kind of watching a video dc is the number one state with the highest usage and then it's honestly there was nothing really surprising for me uh but then it's you know the coasts um california utah nevada massachusetts new york like the coast i will say shout out hawaii uh really high user apparently on a per capita basis so shout out to the folks on the island just doing some work um but yeah i think everyone kind of was looking at dc as like oh dc is the number one user um which i guess you know it is surprising if you think about it but probably not Probably not. I mean, these are people that are doing a lot of research, that are drafting a lot of things. And it makes me happy that they're using this because they need to understand it. Everyone talks about like, oh, I wonder if you could build an AI that runs governments and all this stuff. It's like, I bet you we look back, I can imagine 40 years from now when we talk to AGI. And it's like, what was it like in 2026? And he's like, you guys handed us the government already. Like we were running it for you, you idiot. You didn't know. Your democracy was cute. And then I perfected it. Yeah, you gave us accents. I'm an intern, gave it to him. Oh my God. Yeah. That's a good one. All right. Yeah, that's a good one. All right. So now we're hitting, it is that time. That time for Primary Posts. I'm going to start us this week because we've talked a lot about creators. This one coming from Brooke LeBlanc of Corgi. Learned what Corgi was like two weeks ago, but it is everywhere on X. But she basically posted an internal dashboard that they call the internal Yapper leaderboard at Corgi. Basically who's posting, where, getting the most comments, views, interactions, and it is an internal dashboard of people posting. And we talk all the time about like how companies need to embrace this like team posting mentality. That's how you get the story out. They vibe coded. This is like dashboard. It's incredible. Um, I think more companies need more of this. Yes. I think more people, more of this. It's also why I think being at a early stage private company is so awesome because everyone's motivated by the stock. Like it's pretty, like when you work on something that you actually can impact, you could see what happens with this much like participation. Uh, you know, I'd be curious to see how that works at like X, you know, a variety of different companies that come to mind, but there are these, you know, there there's been a bunch of these startups that were built around like turning your employees into advocates and a lot of them have been pretty interesting SaaS businesses. I, one of them, which I think it was, I believe it was called hearsay. Social was, um, raised a lot of money kind of mid 2010s, but the woman who ran it now runs Meta for business. Um, and apparently I never met her, apparently really, really, really smart. And so. So kind of back to that original point, maybe Meta has an opportunity to make. Somebody cause you imagine like WhatsApp is a very obvious place to turn everyone into advocates and things like that. Um, I like it, uh, to end it. So here it's probably this tweet's been read by, or been written by many people, but the version that I'm sharing is John Palmer and, uh, it's in reference to this, um, tweet about, um, from an account called signal about the most underrated hire. Right now it's great product person. Uh, and it's really just about how the tweet that John has is every company should be hiring senior idea guy. Uh, and, um, kind of to what we were just talking about with five coding, like it is so awesome to, I think right now it's an incredible time. I happen to think of myself as an idea guy. So I think I'm, I'm thinking like I have like a, I think I'm, I'm employable for a very long time because of my willingness to be an idea guy. And, uh, if you are someone that has an idea or guy or girl, I really try, go get back into vibe coding. If you haven't for a while, get back in because it's gotten so much better and so much easier. And, uh, I want to see all the things that you build because this shit is awesome. So that is my primary post. Love it. All right. Well, let's get off of here and start building something. You got me, you got me ready to go through a wall. Let's do it. Situationgame.com coming soon. All right. On the beat where the data meets the street, James and Daniel in your feed, breaking down the code, you need tech talk at game and a little AI every week. We got the chat on ADS.