Pragmatist, futurist, millennial, uncle, & digital marketing guy. Californian, Minnesotan. Love the finer and coarser things in life. Work for @MediasmithInc
San Francisco
Joined October 2008
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I know nothing about this spat or the laptops but I found it wholly unsurprising that Palmer would say "open kimono" in an on the record conversation
Marcus Pratt retweeted
💥 Introducing Warp Sciences, a new company applying AI and robotics to help the world develop new medicines faster.
We’ve raised a $215M Series A led by @lightspeedvp to bring frontier AI out of the browser and into the lab, and build scientific capacity here in America.
I co-founded Warp with my long-time friend @dpatil, FAIR co-founder @manohar_paluri, and drug hunter Sol Reisberg. The early team is full of incredible people like @bkspears9, who helped achieve Q>1 fusion at LLNL.
My @Muse is insistent that it cannot type my email address into a webform. My experience with tool specifically is so different from what I see all over X. How can it manage subscriptions or much of anything for me without this? Or what am I doing wrong?
Marcus Pratt retweeted
Today we’re announcing Personal Agent Protocol — an open standard @Meta and @SierraPlatform are developing along with industry partners at @Genesys, @instinct, @RocketOTD, @Shopify, @stripe, and @Walmart. It will help define how personal agents interact with businesses and is open for anyone to implement.
Read more: sierra.ai/blog/introducing-p…
Marcus Pratt retweeted
The more I've transacted on it, the less confident I am about ad tech's current durable/alt ID infrastructure. The best ways to use them for impact at scale are nefarious and the prescribed ways are inadequate.
...
Marcus Pratt retweeted
There are two fundamental problems with this set of scenarios related to Muse’s revenue contributions to Meta by 2030:
- A and B (worst and base), where Muse is 0.5% and 2.3% of revenue, respectively, are economically irrelevant to Meta and mean the company should shut the product down absent some second-order effects;
- the revenue assumptions in the only scenario that is commercially meaningful to Meta (C, best case, 7.8%) presume a uniformity of direction in take rate, interchange fees, and GMV share with scale that is improbable, and they ignore the opportunity cost of making Muse free and monetizing it with ads.
The first point is obvious: even with the lofty assumption of 15% eComm addressability by third-party agents (!), and 40% (!!) of Muse GMV passing through partners willing to accept a 4% transaction take rate (!!!), Muse accounts for 2.3% of Meta’s revenue by 2030 in scenario B. Immaterial. Who cares.
The second point is more nuanced. In scenario C, 60% of Muse GMV (!!!!) runs through partners willing to pay a 5% take rate (!!!!!). That doesn’t follow from scenario B; surely the largest retail platform holdouts would negotiate a lower transaction fee. That is to say: the highest fees are likely realizable by the smaller players first, and the average take rate probably decreases as total eComm penetration increases.
But more importantly: why would Meta prefer a uniform transaction fee to the auction mechanism it has spent two decades perfecting? Merchants have heterogeneous margins, conversion probabilities, customer values, product lifecycles, and willingness to pay for access to a consumer. An auction allows them to express that willingness to pay; a 5% transaction fee reduces all of that heterogeneity into a fixed percentage.
This is the opportunity cost missing from the model. Meta already generates enormous advertising revenue per user by auctioning access to consumer attention and intent, without needing to intermediate the transaction or secure a commercial agreement covering the resulting GMV.
The model implies ~76MM Muse users in scenario C. Transaction fees + interchange generate roughly $396 per user per year.
For context, while Meta no longer reports geographic ARPU, its earnings disclosures imply current US/Canada Family ARPP somewhere around ~$340/year: UCAN revenue is running at roughly $95–100BN annually against an estimated ~275–300MM daily users. And UCAN revenue grew 32% YoY last quarter.
So even in scenario C, Muse needs each US user to push $12,784 of annual GMV through the product (>$1,000 / month), 60% of that GMV to flow through fee-paying partners, those partners to accept a 5% rake on average, and Meta to capture 10bps of interchange just to generate ~$396 of commerce revenue per user in 2030.
Whereas Meta’s existing advertising machine, today, is generating something like ~$340 per UCAN daily user.
So Meta could just show those users ads.
And the latter mechanism allows merchants to bid according to the actual value of each impression rather than Meta attempting to impose a uniform fee. So the model ultimately demonstrates just how heroic the assumptions have to become before transaction monetization can approach competition with Meta’s existing advertising machine.
Deutsche sees Muse reaching ~8% of $META revenue by 2030 with agent commerce fees driving ~75% of upside case.
What makes that really interesting is the model assumes only ~0.3% of daily users ever pay and gives no credit for Muse completing purchases through $SHOP and Stripe while helping businesses create and spend more on Meta ads.
So Muse can monetize the transaction itself while also feeding more dollars back into Meta’s core ad business,which makes the upside MUCH bigger.
Marcus Pratt retweeted
Muse wrong and unhelpful 10/10 times so far.
What is the point with something you need to know enough to ask it to check every single thing
Marcus Pratt retweeted
In conclusion: Google won across the board. The DOJ arguments were too broad and imprecise. The actual remedies are things Google was probably willing to do anyway.
GAM monopoly is weakened and motivated publishers can now switch. But AdX market share and power remain very strong and AdWords demand isn't rapidly moving anywhere.
Marcus Pratt retweeted
he looks like an owl shaped coat hanger i've been thinking about buying
Marcus Pratt retweeted
Three trains that are coming down the track
1. Major parts of both parties are becoming more comfortable with socialism, either by name or by action (i.e., taking shares of national companies we want to protect)
2. The left already thinks AI is dangerous, and the Trump administration is treating frontier models with advanced cyber capabilities more like a weapon than a consumer product
3. AI spending is becoming bigger and more central to overall economic growth, at the same time that the hyperscalers are leveraging up to build, which means (even if you acknowledge the excellent credit of most of the hyperscalers, the growth in cloud revenue, etc) the risk of a bubble is rising alongside AI's economic significance
So, socialist govt ... plus, a technology akin to a bomb ... plus, an incentive to step in and socialize AI's risk and rewards
I'm not predicting or advocating for any particular outcome here, but you're not taking seriously the plausibility of at least partial AI nationalization in the next few years, I think you should update
Marcus Pratt retweeted
Unfortunately, every claim made in this viral thread is either false or mischaracterizes Google policy.
1) "Search volumes are declining as legacy search is being increasingly cannibalized by non-monetized LLM queries."
Google stated in its Q2 earnings that "Search usage hit an all‑time high during the World Cup this year." It also stated in Q1 earnings that Search queries reached an all-time high that quarter. Ads in AI Overviews monetize at parity with those in legacy Search, and Google's Search revenue increased by 19% in Q1 2026 and 17% in Q2 2026.
2) "recently, Google silently deprecated the 2nd price auction."
Google still uses a generalized second-price auction for Search. Google transitioned away from a second-price auction for display in 2019. But it didn't do so "quietly" as stated in the thread; Google announced the change beforehand, and it was received with intense opposition. This structural change to the auction was part of the DoJ's "ad tech" antitrust case against Google, which was decided in 2025. The author claims further in the thread that, based on his own analysis, he is certain that Google has done the same for Search, but Google has announced no such change, and it strikes me as implausible that Google would make such a dramatic change to its auction after having lost two antitrust suits in the last two years.
3) "Google previously had precise keyword targeting settings that allowed advertisers pick individual search phrases to bid on...But now, even if you bid on a specific term or phrase using the strictest exact -match targeting settings, Google will show your ad across 1000’s of unrelated keywords, labeling them as as 'exact match (close variant)'."
Google introduced "close variant" in 2014. Phrase match was expanded to include queries that shared the "same meaning" as the keyword in 2019, and Google officially sunset Broad Match Modifier (BMM) in 2021.
4) "Lastly, and perhaps most egregiously, Google quietly stopped respecting budget caps by a factor of 2x."
Google's policy is to allow a daily budget to reach up to 2x the budget cap in a single day. The stated purpose of this is to allow advertisers to capitalize on high-traffic days. But on a monthly basis, Google caps total campaign spend to 30.4 * the daily budget cap.
Relevant links included below.
As someone who has personally spent $500k / mo+ on Google Ads for years, I can tell you with certainty:
This revenue growth in Search is artificial & extremely unhealthy for Google’s business long term
Search volumes are declining as legacy search is being increasingly cannibalized by non-monetized LLM queries
Google’s response?
Manufacture revenue growth via short-sighted, highly extractive, customer-hostile tactics. I.e. charge advertisers more for lower quality clicks, including clicks they do not want and explicitly did not approve Google to charge them for
A few examples to illustrate:
For all of its history until recently, Google operated on a 2nd price auction model
I.e. if you bid $5 CPC and the next highest bidder bids $1 CPC, Google charged you $1.01 for the click (one penny more than the 2nd highest bidder) rather than the $5 you bid
This was a genius move by Google early on as it incentivizes advertisers to input their true maximum willingness to pay rather than trying to play the game of bidding low and constantly adjusting to try to stay just ahead of the next highest bidder while still not paying too much
However recently, Google silently deprecated the 2nd price auction and began charging advertisers as much as their bid and budget caps allow, regardless of what anyone else is bidding
It’s a short-sighted cash grab at the expense of the long term health of the advertiser ecosystem
Making thing worse, Google also recently nerfed keyword targeting precision
Google previously had precise keyword targeting settings that allowed advertisers pick individual search phrases to bid on, defined down to the character w/ exact match or phrase match targeting
This was one of the core features that made search advertising magic, enabling advertisers to run extremely precise campaigns based on exactly what their target customer typed
But now, even if you bid on a specific term or phrase using the strictest exact
-match targeting settings, Google will show your ad across 1000’s of unrelated keywords, labeling them as as “exact match (close variant)”
The definition of “close variant” means whatever they want it to and changes constantly. The result is advertisers get billed for clicks that are totally irrelevant to their business and that their targeting settings explicitly forbid Google from targeting. Google does it anyway and there’s no ability to turn this off
So now exact match is broad match, and broad match is just meaningless spam
This is all very bad for advertisers, but for Google, it allows them to show your ad and bill you for clicks across 1000x more searches that were previously going unmonetized (mainly because they’re garbage queries no one wants)
This is how you grow revenue atop declining search volumes
Lastly, and perhaps most egregiously, Google quietly stopped respecting budget caps by a factor of 2x. For example campaigns we’ve been running for years with $1000 daily budget caps suddenly began spending $2000+ per day
And the extra spend is entirely on the garbage keywords Google arbitrarily throws in as “exact match (close variants)” which have no value to our business, but can’t be turned off
Google offers no refunds nor any recourse for overspend or spend on keywords you explicitly did not target
These are not the actions of a healthy business. These are the actions of company whose core business is in decline but desperately needs to pump quarterly earnings so Wall Street will continue to fund insane capex while hopefully looking through their rapidly deteriorating negative free cash flow
Google operated a benevolent monopoly for the better part of 25 yrs
Meaning the value Google captured from Search was but a small fraction of the value it created, and that spread produced a potential energy that justified expectations of high earnings growth far, far into the future
This is now no longer the case
At the alter of AI capex, Google is sacrificing the golden goose
Marcus Pratt retweeted
2007 is known as the year the adtech 1.0 chessboard was set (DCLK -> Google, Acquantive/AdECN -> MSFT, RM -> Yahoo).
... crucially, it was also the founding year of Appnexus, Rubicon Project (Magnite), Mediamath/Invite Media, BlueKai and others, which established programmatic...
... which then led to DV, TTD and the Lumascape.
There is absolutely that level of new-company and -category formation energy happening right now in 2026.
I can't believe we are getting to run it back.
We will all look back on this time similarly.
Marcus Pratt retweeted
Being a good conversationalist becomes as much of a productivity tool as it is a matter of personability and charm as computing interfaces become more voice-oriented imho.
Like if you can't talk to other humans in a relatable way, how are you going to instruct a chat to do work with you? Goes all the way down to management skills imho. The learned edges that help in the "old world" of business will matter just as much in the new.
Marcus Pratt retweeted
my sources tell me the original tagline for this product was “we are listening” but amid concerns it’s changed to “we hear for you”
Sources: OpenAI's first device will be a moveable, screen-free smart speaker with a camera and sensors, meant to serve as a humanlike AI companion (@markgurman / Bloomberg)
(Visit Techmeme dot com for the link and full context!)
Getting programmatic display ads on X - this seems new!
Below "who to follow" I've seen fill from Google Ads and Taboola. No ad-servers showing up in Sincera
