Topic: Adtech

The collapse of Facebook's stock price is cited as proof that internet advertising is a flawed business model due to the lack of inventory scarcity. Unlike television, which has finite ad slots, the internet offers unlimited inventory, which naturally drives prices down. Most "free" internet services, including Flickr and Instagram, struggle to monetize their users because display ads lack the effectiveness of traditional media.

The AdTech conference provides its speeches as podcasts, though the lack of a centralized RSS feed makes curation difficult. While some users still burn podcasts to CDs for car listening, the 70-minute limit of physical discs is contrasted with the superior storage capacity of modern mobile devices like the Nokia E71.