The correct amount of ads is zero
manuelmoreale.com
The correct amount of ads is zero
1–10 of 611 posts
Re: The correct amount of ads is zero
#2Blame consumers for this. If a company sells a service for $10/mo ad-free and $9/mo completely loaded with ads, most people will pick the latter plan. Why won't they offer it then?
Re: The correct amount of ads is zero
#3Blame consumers for this. If a company sells a service for $10/mo ad-free and $9/mo completely loaded with ads, most people will pick the latter plan. Why won't they offer it then?
Because if they did the 9$ ads would plummet in price paid to the platform because it implies to the advertisers the consumers have no purchasing capability and may be price sensitive or else they would shell out the extra dollar. If they don't offer it and still sell adds they can demand advertisers pay the premium as the consumer has disposable income to buy the service and is likely price insensitive since they are now paying for something that was free.
Re: The correct amount of ads is zero
#4Blame consumers for this. If a company sells a service for $10/mo ad-free and $9/mo completely loaded with ads, most people will pick the latter plan. Why won't they offer it then?
because someone will offer the same for 9usd without ads, hopefully
Re: The correct amount of ads is zero
#5[flagged]
Re: The correct amount of ads is zero
#6Blame consumers for this. If a company sells a service for $10/mo ad-free and $9/mo completely loaded with ads, most people will pick the latter plan. Why won't they offer it then?
Citation? That is absolutely not true for me, and strikes me as obviously false, but I'm willing to be wrong.
Re: The correct amount of ads is zero
#7I now have disabled JS on Verge as a result (using uBO), because the site does a “Quick Flash of Content” that disappears immediately.
Re: The correct amount of ads is zero
#8[flagged]
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Re: The correct amount of ads is zero
#9> The correct amount of ads for a publication that’s directly supported is zero.
I basically agree with this sentiment, but one place where it can be a tricky balance (not saying that's the case here!) is "native advertising".
For example, a new game is being released, the publisher collaborates with TheBrink, a hypothetical popular game news site, and for this they get a huge takeover banner advert for the week, increased placement on ad units around the site, a "behind the scenes" post written about the game, and an interview with the developers published to TheBrink's YouTube channel. This type of package is absolutely a thing that gets sold.
Which bits of this are ads? Well the behind the scenes post and interview could theoretically have been produced anyway, they're within the scope of the site, but in this case they weren't prioritised, certainly not for launch day, it was only by the whole collaboration being paid for that they got made. Are they ads? Yes they are ads. How would a loyal subscriber feel about those parts being hidden from them though? I imagine they would be miffed about that.
Native advertising like this has a whole spectrum of quality and the worst native ads are very explicitly ads that have no value to typical readers. However "good" native ads are really just a company paying for priority reporting in the style that would otherwise be done anyway, and are probably content that readers/viewers want.
How do you resolve this? No idea. If I were paying I'd want to see that content assuming it's good quality. Others would not on the basis of bias or a more philosophical opposition to ads.
Re: The correct amount of ads is zero
#10Blame consumers for this. If a company sells a service for $10/mo ad-free and $9/mo completely loaded with ads, most people will pick the latter plan. Why won't they offer it then?
Because if they did the 9$ ads would plummet in price paid to the platform because it implies to the advertisers the consumers have no purchasing capability and may be price sensitive or else they would shell out the extra dollar. If they don't offer it and still sell adds they can demand advertisers pay the premium as the consumer has disposable income to buy the service and is likely price insensitive since they ar…
Is this actually true? It's one of those bits of "telephone wisdom" I've heard passed from commenter to commenter on Hacker News (and Slashdot before that) for as long as I can remember, but nobody ever seems to have a primary source for it, it's always been a "just trust me" bit of knowledge.