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On Friday, the state of Maryland became the first in the country to impose a tax on the billions of dollars tech companies make selling online advertising. The Maryland Senate voted to override Gov. Larry Hogan's veto of the proposed law after the House of Delegates did the same Thursday. The tax is aimed at tech giants like Google, Facebook and Amazon, and would range from 2.5% to 10% of ad revenue, depending on the company's size. In its first year, the tax would raise an estimated $250 million. The money tech firms pay would go to schools, said state Sen. James Rosapepe, a Democrat from College Park. "These companies have built their businesses on the public investment in public education," he said. "So we said, 'Look, let's dedicate the money from these folks to making our education system even better.' That'll be good for the people in Maryland; it'll also be good for these companies." Maybe so, but a coalition of businesses

With more than 2.6 billion daily users, there's no denying that Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) reaches a lot of people around the world across its free-to-use properties: Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Most of the tech stock's revenue is from advertising, so how does Facebook stack up on user monetization compared to its competitors? Corinne Cardina, Fool.com's healthcare and cannabis bureau chief, spoke with Nick Sciple, the bureau chief of tech, energy, and industrials, on a Fool Live episode recorded Feb. 11, about the eye-popping profit Facebook makes off each of its users. [embedded content]   Corinne Cardina:  It's the attention economy. They are selling our eyeballs and that's really its value proposition. All of its big, social platforms are free to use, whether you're talking about Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp. Where its money come from is ads. Its revenue, in terms of ads, in 2020, that ad revenue reached $84 billion. The other part

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Google closeup logo displayed on a phone screen.(Photo by Nicolas Economou/NurPhoto via Getty ... [+] Images) NurPhoto via Getty Images The most interesting tax news these days may not be the tax cuts in the massive pandemic relief bill now awaiting House passage. Rather, it may be the growing efforts of states to tax internet advertising. These new state taxes, which parallel efforts by several European countries to tax digital services, raise three huge questions: Are they permitted under federal law? Are they good policy? And is it realistic to expect individual states to solve the tax challenges raised by an increasingly virtual world? The simmering debate boiled over on Feb. 12 when the Maryland legislature, controlled by Democrats, enacted what is effectively a gross receipts tax on digital advertising, overriding a veto by Republican Governor Larry Hogan. Yet efforts to tax digital ads are not partisan. Nearly identical legislation to impose gross receipts taxes on

TikTok challenges sent brands from Gucci to JW Anderson viral in 2020. Now, fashion may be able to better integrate their products and ads on the video-sharing app in 2021, as the company rolls out new e-commerce and advertising capabilities. TikTok is planning new features akin to Instagram and Facebook, including self-service advertising, affiliate links (influencers make money on brands they promote), and in-app brand catalogues, the company confirmed to Vogue Business, following a Financial Times report. The shift could spell an opportunity for fashion brands to capture the app's 1 billion monthly active users, a largely Gen Z cohort. TikTok's popularity has surged thanks to its content-based algorithm, which is perfectly tailored to users' interests, rather than just content from people they follow. This means anyone can go viral and gives the platform a democratic, unfiltered edge over others. According to Kantar's recent Media Reactions survey of global

This article is part of "Deconstructing artificial intelligence," a series of posts that explore the details of how AI applications work. Every day, digital advertisement agencies serve billions of ads on news websites, search engines, social media networks, video streaming websites, and other platforms. And they all want to answer the same question: Which of the many ads they have in their catalog is more likely to appeal to a certain viewer? Finding the right answer to this question can have a huge impact on revenue when you are dealing with hundreds of websites, thousands of ads, and millions of visitors. Fortunately (for the ad agencies, at least), reinforcement learning, the branch of artificial intelligence that has become renowned for mastering board and video games, provides a solution. Reinforcement learning models seek to maximize rewards. In the case of online ads, the RL model will try to find the ad that users are more likely to click on. The digita

Here's something meta for you: Facebook is running a targeted ad campaign to promote the importance of … targeted advertising. On Thursday, Facebook launched a national push that aims to demonstrate the value of personalized ads, especially for small businesses reeling from the ongoing pandemic. The campaign, under the title "Good Ideas Deserve To Be Found," will run across TV, radio and online digital channels, including on Facebook and Instagram, through the spring in the US. The TV spot will air across a bunch of different networks and shows, starting with Good Morning America, World News Tonight, Young Sheldon CBS, NCAA basketball and during the Golden Globes. The purpose of the campaign is to highlight small businesses that have used personalized ads on Facebook and Instagram to find their audiences and grow their business, like Goat House Farm, a micro-farm in Florida that offers goat yoga classes. Not addressed is the fact that organic reach on Facebook has b

ARLINGTON, Va.--( BUSINESS WIRE )--Graham Holdings Company (NYSE: GHC) today reported net income attributable to common shares of $300.4 million ($58.13 per share) for the year ended December 31, 2020, compared to $327.9 million ($61.21 per share) for the year ended December 31, 2019. For the fourth quarter of 2020, the Company reported net income attributable to common shares of $237.1 million ($47.34 per share), compared to $145.9 million ($27.25 per share) for the same period of 2019. The COVID-19 pandemic and measures taken to prevent its spread, such as travel restrictions, shelter in place orders and mandatory closures, significantly impacted the Company's results for 2020, largely from reduced demand for the Company's products and services. This significant adverse impact is expected to continue into 2021. The Company's management has taken a variety of measures to reduce costs and to implement changes to business operations. The Company cannot predict the severity