How much do companies lose when Google Ads go down
http://www.businessinsider.com/doubleclick-for-publishers-down-2014-11
The linked article discusses some of the effects of one of Google’s main ad services, DoubleClick going down for well over an hour on Wednesday, November 12th. Specifically the ad server for publishers went down. This is more or less the service in which Google runs the modified second price auction that we discussed in class. When this service went down the auction for these ad spaces was no longer being run and ads were not displayed. The article cites several sources and claims that this shortage which lasted for around 1.75 hours cost ad publishers worldwide 1.75 million dollars (1 million dollars an hour) in ad revenue. Google’s loss is not reported but is of course less.
The article also points out an interesting fact that do to the ads failing to load, the load time of websites across most industries doubled or even tripled. Of course if there were never any ads, this effect on load times wouldn’t exist. But, as everyone took to the social networks on the 12th to point out that the internet was ad free and cheer, it took them three times longer than usual. An interesting irony in my opinion.