I've paid for cellphone apps where the only benefit is to make them ad-free. I wonder if the problem is one of the sheer magnitude of revenue, to wit: Maybe they can capture $10/user/year on subscription fees, but the sky's the limit on how much they can get in $/user/year from advertisers.
Telegram is booming but needs advertisers and $700M soon
101–110 of 333 posts
Re: Telegram is booming but needs advertisers and $700M soon
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem with this model from the advertisers perspective is the people with disposable income who will pay for your ad free experience are the exact people they want to show the ads to. I don’t know if telegram has this problem, but it’s certainly the problem in most ad + premium models because if I am advertising something like a car, I want the guy who can afford $10/month for her texting app to see my ad more…
Why would you think someone who actively pays to not be served ads would be a good fit to be advertised to? Eg. My personal experience with buying products (food, software, SaaS, etc) based on ads conditioned me to actively distrust products that are heavily advertised compared to stuff that's just mentioned in reddit threads or used by friends. Would I be a good fit for ads?
If you are willing to pay for something that is free, it generally means you have more disposable income. It's not that you become more valuable, it's that the remaining cohort becomes less valuable.
Few people making $30,000 a year are going to pay to disable ads. many people making $200,000 or more are going to consider it.
Re: Telegram is booming but needs advertisers and $700M soon
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem with this model from the advertisers perspective is the people with disposable income who will pay for your ad free experience are the exact people they want to show the ads to. I don’t know if telegram has this problem, but it’s certainly the problem in most ad + premium models because if I am advertising something like a car, I want the guy who can afford $10/month for her texting app to see my ad more…
Why would you think someone who actively pays to not be served ads would be a good fit to be advertised to? Eg. My personal experience with buying products (food, software, SaaS, etc) based on ads conditioned me to actively distrust products that are heavily advertised compared to stuff that's just mentioned in reddit threads or used by friends. Would I be a good fit for ads?
The goal of an ad is mostly to make potential buyers aware of a specific product/brand. Hence, showing ads to potential buyers is most effective, even if many/most will not become actual buyers (like you, apparently). The conversion rate among the potential buyers (who can afford to pay for an ad-free service) is still much higher than among users who agree to see the ad (by not paying for an ad-free service), but cannot afford to buy the product.
Re: Telegram is booming but needs advertisers and $700M soon
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
The author of the parent comment specifically mentioned "change in privacy update" as the reason to switch. Until WhatsApp drops end-to-end encryption, there's not that much evil they can do. They can't read your messages. You don't need to trust WhatsApp (so far). Telegram can have the best privacy policy, but they can always read your messages. You have to trust Telegram to do the right thing. (Except those few who…
Why is this such a big issue? When I use Telegram in the past (and I did for years) every chat I had was encrypted. Enabling isn't that complicated.
Enabling E2E encryption in Telegram limits you to only the device that the chat was created in. WhatsApp and Signal allow you to use their desktop apps (not the best app but that isn't the point). This allows me to use a full sized keyboard when I have the need.
Re: Telegram is booming but needs advertisers and $700M soon
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
> However, that route is not so easy. People in Latin American countries can't really afford to pay for apps. AdGuard and Cloudflare (at least for Warp+) adjust their monthly and annual subscription rates based on location. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Mac_Index
This incentivizes inequality. I live in Mexico, earning 10x more than most, yet I could pay less.
It also improves affordability for those that don't make 10x the national average.
Re: Telegram is booming but needs advertisers and $700M soon
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not everyone wants to sell user data. Their business is in private communication. WhatsApp reads through all your shit, whether you like it or not.
Nope. WhatsApp can only potentially read your group messages since 1:1 messages are end to end encrypted. You shouldn't spread FUD
Group messages are also end-to-end encrypted.
Re: Telegram is booming but needs advertisers and $700M soon
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem with this model from the advertisers perspective is the people with disposable income who will pay for your ad free experience are the exact people they want to show the ads to. I don’t know if telegram has this problem, but it’s certainly the problem in most ad + premium models because if I am advertising something like a car, I want the guy who can afford $10/month for her texting app to see my ad more…
Why would you think someone who actively pays to not be served ads would be a good fit to be advertised to? Eg. My personal experience with buying products (food, software, SaaS, etc) based on ads conditioned me to actively distrust products that are heavily advertised compared to stuff that's just mentioned in reddit threads or used by friends. Would I be a good fit for ads?
Disposable income. Demographic is different for people who pay to remove ads than people who don't. I pay to block ads on Hulu and Youtube and buy upcoming brands like Vuori, Away, Peloton, Allbirds etc.
Marketing works. How do you think your friends learned about product that are mentioned in reddit threads? Guarantee it wasn't organic. If the company was launched in the last 10 years, it was built on VC dollars used to spend tens to hundreds millions in marketing.
Re: Telegram is booming but needs advertisers and $700M soon
#108What about ads + paid plans with no ads? I feel like that’s a great middle ground for everyone who would delete the app if it had ads. Am I missing something with that thought process?
The problem with this model from the advertisers perspective is the people with disposable income who will pay for your ad free experience are the exact people they want to show the ads to. I don’t know if telegram has this problem, but it’s certainly the problem in most ad + premium models because if I am advertising something like a car, I want the guy who can afford $10/month for her texting app to see my ad more…
Exactly. FB would never do this, and google would never do it for search. It's adverse selection.
Spotify is a good example. The ad supported version has uses: it's a funnel for paid users, a deterrent to competition, a data farm, etc. Making money is not one of those uses. I suspect that this is because the best advertisers audience subscribes.
Also, opt out ads also harms your upside. EG, fb make more in ad revenue than they could ever make in subs. You don't want to pursue an ad-based strategy that excludes the possibility of a win like that, even if it's a long shot.
Re: Telegram is booming but needs advertisers and $700M soon
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not everyone wants to sell user data. Their business is in private communication. WhatsApp reads through all your shit, whether you like it or not.
Nope. WhatsApp can only potentially read your group messages since 1:1 messages are end to end encrypted. You shouldn't spread FUD
WhatsApp group chats are end to end encrypted too. You must be thinking of... Telegram, where only secret 1:1 chats are end to end encrypted
Re: Telegram is booming but needs advertisers and $700M soon
#110I quite like Telegram, because I am apparently an old man at the age of 37, and I greatly prefer typing on my real physical keyboard, and not on my phone. Telegram’s desktop client for Mac is great—it’s fast, it has feature parity with mobile clients, and it works . Messages get delivered and stay in sync, and I don’t need to somehow link my phone to my main machine via QR code to act as a gateway. And if they introd…
As I understood it, there will be official ads in channels. Channels already do ads, but Telegram will step in to be an intermediary and take a cut. So from the end user perspective, nothing will change at all.