Comment by keerthiko

> By doing this, you'll chase the ads into

IMO regulation never was or is going to force this shift: it's already happening in unregulated ad markets, and is going to keep evolving in that direction because it's simply more effective/lucrative than ads done other ways.

> Break up Google. Don't tell content marketplaces how to run ads.

I'm all for breaking up megacorps, but there's no way a government like Vietnam can effectively accomplish that. The entire regulatory weight of the EU (90% of the non-US first-world consumer base) can't break up Google, so inflicting a series of wristslaps that hurt Google more than any small startup is the best way.

I'm no expert on the region, but I can't imagine a small video/social startup in Vietnam will be hurt more than Google by being forced to show a skip button after 5s on their ads — and generally speaking ads as a business model generally doesn't work all that well or mean much for small startups (<1M MAU), their survival and scalability hinges more on VC money and product-market fit than ad arbitrage.