SoylentNews

JoeMerchant [soylentnews.org] writes:

Google has a price for you. Proton found it. [proton.me] The company analyzed over 54,000 demographic profiles using 2025 ad auction data to see what advertisers pay to reach different Americans. The average American generates about $1,605 a year in advertising value. The median is $760. The gap between those two numbers tells the story. A small number of high-value users pull the average up. The business runs on outliers.

The spread is stark. A 35- to 44-year-old man in Bozeman, Montana — no children, desktop user, making high-value corporate searches — is worth an estimated $17,929 per year. An 18- to 24-year-old father in Fort Smith, Arkansas — Android phone, low-value searches — is worth $31.05. That is a 577x difference between two people using the same free service. Device matters. A desktop user is worth 4.9 times more than the same person on Android. An iPhone user is worth 2.7 times more than Android. Having children costs you roughly 17% of your ad value. Advertiser value peaks between ages 35 and 44. By 65, average value drops to $511.

Where you live sets a floor on your price. Local service providers — lawyers, real estate agents, financial planners — bid against each other for local clicks. The more competitive the local market, the higher the floor price for everyone in it. The top markets are Edmond, Oklahoma and Bozeman, Montana, followed by Naperville, Illinois, Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Durham, North Carolina. The least valuable markets are concentrated in the Rust Belt and Appalachia — Wheeling and Parkersburg in West Virginia, Toledo, Ohio, and Buffalo, New York — where lower median incomes and fewer competing advertisers mean less bidding pressure. Over a decade, the average American represents roughly $16,050 in ad value. The most monetized profiles approach $180,000. Most people would not hand a corporation that much money over a lifetime. But that is what the system collects.

-----

Google, while big, is only one internet advertiser - and all that collected advertising income actually comes from consumers of the goods and services being advertised, as a premium on the price of the products. One particular medical device I worked on cost $600 to make, and $14,400 to sell at a net price to the patient of $15,000 for the device and another $15,000 to the hospital for the implantation procedure. Yes, the company was operating at break-even, spending 24x what the physical device cost to make and deliver on nothing but sales and marketing - hoping that some day they could get those sales costs down... didn't happen during the 2 years I worked there.

Original Submission