It looks like the main reason the ads price for therapy went up is the extra competition - that COVID making the therapy market from in-person to virtual creates the supply to be not constrained by distance, which means suppliers have to compete across greater pool of suppliers, including therapists from cheaper cost of living areas. This naturally creates a downward pressure for the average price, and of course firms like BetterHelp show up to take advantage of this price differential - i.e. they are doing an arbitrage.<p>So this comes down to therapists living in expensive areas complaining about competition from therapists from cheaper areas. Given there are still people who need/want local therapy, there will be a new price equilibrium but most likely it will be lower than before. No amount of complaining about Google or ads or arbitrage like BetterHelp will make the price stay as before. Nothing much to see here - this looks mostly like a market adapting to a new changed market condition.
As I understand it, the problem here has little to do with Google. The problem is that the transition to telehealth means that therapists are now competing directly with large national mental healthare providers like BetterHealth and Talkspace mentioned in the article. Those big companies have deeper advertising pockets.<p>If you want to break up companies to make it easier for independent therapists, those are the ones to break up. Google is just the marketplace.<p>This is like blaming the sidewalk or the interstate highway system when Wal-Mart causes your local mom and pop store to shut down. Google isn't driving her prices up, <i>competition</i> is.
The article is so wrong. This is part of the reason why I do not take main stream journalists very seriously. I wish same issue was taken up by some hard core economist.<p>What is wrong with the article :<p>- So one small Psychiatrist is losing business to other Psychiatrists.<p>It is perfectly possible that Ross is an inefficient Psychiatrist here and patients are better served by other Psychiatrists. This is a loss for Ross but barely a "complication". Also it is not clear to me if the market was divided 50-50 between say Google and Bing why would it be any difference. From over 10 years of experience in ad industry I have realized that it is a ruthlessly free market system where the inefficient player will get punished very quickly.<p>What Google has done here is that opened up a lager pool of customers for the suppliers and that has resulted into fierce competition among suppliers. The customers invariably will benefit here as they have more options.<p>- The rant about smart campaigns<p>This is one of the real bad arguments. A couple's councilor is upset that Google is unable to differentiate between a PTSD councilor and couple's Councillor. Will the world be better served if a couple's councilor has to compete with a florist or a nanny ? [That it what yellow pages were].<p>The article laments that customers have more choice and it is not easy for the suppliers to rely on information asymmetry to make profit. They take some fictional futuristic scenario and compare google against it and blame those problems on Google. But in reality it is a good problem to have.<p>PS. This is by no means to claim that Google's ad algorithms are perfect, but it is without dispute that they are better than all available alternatives.
In France, they fixed this by not allowing doctors or drugs to advertise. One of the best decisions ever, for a lot of reasons: you cut care cost, and you avoid that kind of third party profiteering.
> he didn’t even check to see how they did. “I mean, it’s Bing, right?” he says.<p>Bing and Yahoo are still about 20% of the American market. It is not inconsequential.<p>I suspect that prices have soared there as well though, simply because the pandemic severely disrupts therapists. In a world of video calls, there is no local market.<p>There are as many places seeking to sell you therapy as sell you gasoline now.
I don't see the direct connection to out mental health crisis in this issue. None of this addresses the mental health care crisis in terms of patient outcomes and patient well being.<p>Instead, the article talks about how individual therapists are losing out as ad prices rise and newer tech-mediated therapy platforms are gaining attention & market share. (and working for those platforms doesn't pay nearly as well) Also google has a near-monopoly for online advertising, so these therapists have few options if they aren't born natural marketers, and Google customer support is bad. In short, it's bad for therapists.<p>Nothing much said about this being bad for patients though. It's possible patients have greater access to care with these new platforms.
The article completely failed to convince me on it's main point.<p>No regulation will fix the fact that people have limited attention, besides banning ads altogether.<p>Google does a lot of bad stuff, but auctioning ads is not one of them.<p>Also somebody dares to bill people ONLY 50$ per hour! How dare they to not bill 250$?! ...
A question from the millions of folks who don't have $50-250/hr (x hr/mo) - could this possibly lead to a genuine chance at therapy?<p>[a] Five therapists offering 2/hrs per week to the community isn't nothing - it is a drop in an ocean of need, however.<p>[b] No. Trying to launch an insurance debate won't help answer this question in a helpful way. Thanks for asking tho.
Isn't Google Maps search free for users and providers?<p>Doesn't high ad pricing mean there is a glut of supply for the service in question?<p>The article subject seems upset that someone else gets the customers, but that's not a problem for anyone. If the subject got the customers, that wouldn't be "fair" to their competitors.