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I Pay for News; Why Do I Still See Intrusive Ads? (2017)

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Re: I Pay for News; Why Do I Still See Intrusive Ads? (2017)

#131

Post by ChristianGeek »

izacus wrote: post #16
pixelmonkey wrote: post #4

The answer may not be pleasing, but it's true: because "paid subscribers" represent a valuable advertising demographic/segment. They are nearly certain you are human traffic, and you have enough disposable income that you pay for news.

You can pretty much make this argument for everything - Ferraris should be plastered by LCDs with ads then. Business class airplanes filled with blinking video ads. Entrances to highend butiques crowded with people pushing ad leaflets into rich peoples hands.... Why is it acceptable on the web?

Give me any of these (ok, maybe not the Ferrari) at a significant discount in exchange for putting up with ads and we can talk!

Re: I Pay for News; Why Do I Still See Intrusive Ads? (2017)

#132

Post by bootlooped »

Godel_unicode wrote: post #87
gunnihinn wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, does anyone have a ballpark estimate for what a no-ad online subscription would cost if we assume the parent is true?

According to the New York Times latest earnings call, subscriptions account for 2/3 of their revenue. So ballpark roughly 50% more than the current subscription price would be necessary to maintain revenue at the same subscriber count sans other revenue streams.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/03/business/media/new-york-t...

The above article also states that digital advertising revenue only accounted for 37 percent of total advertising revenue. So that means digital advertising revenue is at most 12% of total revenue. Furthermore, it is unstated how much of digital advertising revenue comes from paid subscribers vs unpaid visitors.

If we assumed, for the sake of argument, that half of digital advertising revenue was from paid and half unpaid, then cutting ads for paid subscribers would be doable with only about a 10% increase in price.

Re: I Pay for News; Why Do I Still See Intrusive Ads? (2017)

#133

Post by panarky »

When I was young my family paid for cable TV when the rest of the neighborhood still had antennas on their roofs because pay TV didn't have commercials.

Now I pay for cable TV and it's jammed full of commercials.

The idea that free online services aren't really free because we pay with our attention and with our data is only half true.

Paid online services also take our data and increasingly interrupt us with advertisements, just like cable TV.

Re: I Pay for News; Why Do I Still See Intrusive Ads? (2017)

#135

Post by gmjoe »

Some numbers for perspective [1]:

Digital-only subscription revenue in 2017: $340 million

Digital advertising revenue in 2017: $238 million

Obviously some digital advertising is shown to print subscribers logging in too... but if we ignore that for simplicity, without ads your NYT digital subscription would be 70% more expensive.

At $195/yr. for digital-only, it's already my most expensive subscription by a significant amount. If it were 70% more, or $331.50/yr, I imagine subscriptions would drop by a lot -- that's a lot of money for news.

So... that's presumably why there are still ads. Gotta pay the reporters somehow.

On the other hand, the New Yorker bugging you to subscribe is just lazy programming, and I hate it too.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/08/business/new-york-times-c...

Re: I Pay for News; Why Do I Still See Intrusive Ads? (2017)

#136

Post by hrktb »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #124
na85 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The takeaway is that advertisers don't care what you think and do in fact believe that they should shove ads in your face every step of your life, even if you pay for a product. Welcome to the world. Half the users of this site are actively perpetuating the corporate dystopia we inhabit.

I'm sure they'd start caring if everyone started blocking their ads instead of accepting them. Maybe one day we'll have augmented reality glasses with built in ad blockers; I wonder how they'd react to that.

Talking about advertisers, I think the main qualities we can credit them is grit and smarts.

Block their ads on the web ? you still have them on billboards if they’re local. They’ll mass DM whole regions if it makes economical sense. Your Netflix drama series will start mentionning them in passing. They’ll make ‘news’ pieces with a product CEO saving a baby chimpanzee that was not endangered in the first place.

You know they’ll find a way to your eyeballs by whatever mean, as long as it makes any sense to them.

Re: I Pay for News; Why Do I Still See Intrusive Ads? (2017)

#137

Post by JasonFruit »

Godel_unicode wrote: post #91
JasonFruit wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Few of these are news sources worthy of note.)

Why do you think news consumers are different than YouTube consumers?

Because there's a difference between reading professionally produced news and watching contributed videos? Is there a reason you think they are the same?

Re: I Pay for News; Why Do I Still See Intrusive Ads? (2017)

#138

Post by fphhotchips »

52-6F-62 wrote: post #103
angott wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This already happens on Air Canada (although at least the ads are not personalized). Before each movie or show you play on your IFE screen in economy class, they make you watch two 30 seconds ads. I was very annoyed, especially since AC tickets are already overpriced (little/no competition on domestic flights in Canada).

Air Canada IFE pro tip: You can skip the ads. Just scrub ahead.

Stop telling people this. Just like everything good on the internet, once people find out about it, it will be gone.

Re: I Pay for News; Why Do I Still See Intrusive Ads? (2017)

#139

Post by Sgt_Apone »

sintaxi wrote: post #107
jmuguy wrote: post #58

I pay for Ars Technica, definitely wouldn’t if paying didn’t disable the ads.

The articles are ads. Eg. https://twitter.com/arstechnica/status/1051475468199833600

That's a car review, not an advertisement. If you actually read it, they don't even like it much.

>Meh. All-in-all, the Lexus NX 300h is an uninspiring car. If you like hybrids and want to drive one with a luxury badge, the NX 300h is worth looking at. I would have liked the option to suck the battery dry before the internal combustion engine kicks in (à la the plug-in Chrysler Pacifica hybrid). Instead, EV Mode in the NX 300h is limited to low speeds.

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