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“Your frustration is the product”

daringfireball.net

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Re: “Your frustration is the product”

#231

Post by jetpks »

harikb wrote: post #203
saltyoldman wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What frustrates me to no end, is that Youtube makes about $2 per user per month from ads. Yet if i want to go ad free, they expect me to pay $14 per month. Why in the hell would they not just sell it to me at cost for $2. Heck, I'll even say I'll be a customer for the REST OF TIME if they did that. I understand why Netflix and other vendors charge $12 - $20 because it has to pay for the copyright. But Youtube does NO…

Unless you have some first hand information that I have, you are more than 10x off. > I refuse to buy Youtube ad free until they drop the price to something $3 or below... There in lies the problem. Your eye balls (assuming well employed with $$$ disposable income) is another 10x worth to advertisers. If I were to make a guess, Youtube for sure will lose money at $14/month on your specific browser. You are literally…

At least in my case, I had Youtube Red and would watch a few hours of content per day. Then I canceled and found the ads so unreasonable that I just stopped using youtube altogether. Now they make no money from me.

Re: “Your frustration is the product”

#232

Post by hunterpayne »

dmd wrote: post #178

> the equivalent of a broadcast TV channel that only showed 7 minutes of actual TV content per hour, devoting the other 53 minutes to paid commercials and promotions for other shows on the same channel. Almost no one would watch such a channel. I recently was in a 45 minutes Uber ride where the driver had the stereo set to the Sirius XM self-advertising channel - the one you get if you haven't subscribed. For 45 minu…

Or perhaps his free trial ran out and he can't justify the extra expense. Driving Uber isn't exactly a path to riches.

Re: “Your frustration is the product”

#233

Post by aucisson_masque »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #200
alex_smart wrote: post #81

> No print publication on the planet does this At least in India, most popular newspapers actually do this nowadays. Several full page ads including on the front page have become the norm. It is mostly a function of how little the reader is willing to pay for content. When the price point is too low (which for online content is too low), publishers make their money by other means. It is not rocket science.

A lot of print publications used to do it, and many still do. Print magazines make most of their money from ad sales, not subscriptions. A typical ratio is 60:40 ads vs editorial. Magazines like Vogue go >70% ads, and I'm fairly sure old issues of Byte and other computer magazines were in that ballpark. The difference in print is that the ads are targeted, and even welcome. Many of the ads in old computer magazines w…

You also have the paid articles where 'journalist' interview some company ceo or influencer that happened to have given them a substantial amount of money.

Re: “Your frustration is the product”

#234

Post by VertanaNinjai »

browningstreet wrote: post #191
jes5199 wrote: post #77

I used to work at a startup that was trying to replace ads as the funding source for news (we failed, obviously) but the crazy thing we discovered is that the people who run news websites mostly don’t know where their ads are coming from, have forgotten how the ad system was installed in the first place, and cannot turn them off if they try we actually shipped a server-side ad blocker, for a parter who had so complet…

I had a site with some traffic and a popular, class-leading ad plugin for the platform. At some point I just lost interest in the whole thing and cancelled my plugin subscription. I got an email from the developer, which was kind enough, asking me why I was cancelling and if there was any feedback I wanted to share. I mentioned how complicated ad inventory, ad placement, and online ordering for hands-off customer sel…

Maybe there are some details missing here, but asking for more detailed or tailored feedback makes it seem like he cares and was willing to hear you out. Sometimes people are in their own industry for so long that they forget what their industry and tools look like to outside eyes. A simple menu to him could’ve been overwhelming for you as a quick example.

Re: “Your frustration is the product”

#235

Post by dmd »

hunterpayne wrote: post #232
dmd wrote: post #178

> the equivalent of a broadcast TV channel that only showed 7 minutes of actual TV content per hour, devoting the other 53 minutes to paid commercials and promotions for other shows on the same channel. Almost no one would watch such a channel. I recently was in a 45 minutes Uber ride where the driver had the stereo set to the Sirius XM self-advertising channel - the one you get if you haven't subscribed. For 45 minu…

Or perhaps his free trial ran out and he can't justify the extra expense. Driving Uber isn't exactly a path to riches.

ok ... but why would you listen to the ad - and nothing else, jsut the ad - for 45 minutes straight? it's not like there aren't a billion other options.

Re: “Your frustration is the product”

#236

Post by hunterpayne »

everybodyknows wrote: post #142
deejaaymac wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know of one but it's niche. OpenSubtitles allows people to pay for ads at the start/end of content when you download subtitles on the fly. I've seen countless NordVPN ads in subtitles.

Another niche: Software professionals https://www.carbonads.net/

Have you used them? How was your experience? Did the ads convert effectively?

Re: “Your frustration is the product”

#237

Post by BizarroLand »

porkloin wrote: post #228
BizarroLand wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would gladly pay an extra $20/m for a Disney style internet fast pass where I can browse any site that is subscribed to the service without ads, cookie preferences already set, no login or login managed by the extension for the fast pass service, and maybe a search provider that allows me to filter out SSO spam sites and adwhores like Meta and Google, and where some significant portion of my monthly pay is sent to…

I think Kagi is kind of making this happen currently with search. Not sure how their adoption number are going, but people are willing to pay $$ for better search with no "sponsored content" rising to the top. I'm hesitant about a lot of this stuff because it's very easy to get to a place where we let net neutrality degrade even more than it already has. Part of the way that platforms indoctrinate us to accept that p…

Good catch. I didn't even think about the fast lanes fiasco. I don't know why businesses have decided that since they have connected to the internet that the internet owes them.

It should be a public utility. It should be as ad free as reasonable. It should not track you.

The internet should be a lot of things that it currently isn't all because rent-seeking money and power grubbing bastards have too many of the strings and love pulling them like they're pulling their puds.

Re: “Your frustration is the product”

#238

Post by magiclaw »

> The publisher is held hostage by incentives from an auction system that not only encourages but also rewards dark patterns.

lol, they're doing for the money. Not because they're "held hostage". More time on site means more money. They know this. They know it's a shitty experience. Look, I get it, they have to make money somehow, but some of these sites try to squeeze every last drop of money out of users. It's a fine line to walk between "I'll stay because this content is interesting" and "F this man, I'm leaving", and some push that line hard.

Re: “Your frustration is the product”

#239

Post by magiclaw »

pcl wrote: post #194

It’s ironic seeing Gruber gripe about screen percentages used when his own website dedicates only about 50% of the screen width (on mobile) to content, and leaves the other half blank. Not to mention the light-grey-on-dark-grey and the tiny font. Just as I need an ad blocker to browse the modern web, I need Reader mode to read Gruber’s rant about it.

That's what CTRL+MouseWheel is for

Re: “Your frustration is the product”

#240

Post by WorldPeas »

likium wrote: post #104
superjared wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we actually shipped a server-side ad blocker, for a parter who had so completely lost control of their own platform that it was the only way to make the ads stop this is batshit insane, yet I believe it

"Parable of the broken window", except instead of preventing the kid from throwing the rocks, they hired a someone to catch the rocks midair.

though in this case it seems "the rocks were coming from inside the building"
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