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Adblock Radio: An adblocker for live radio streams and podcasts

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Re: Adblock Radio: An adblocker for live radio streams and podcasts

#241

Post by greggman2 »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #53
TeMPOraL wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take a closer look at that feeling. If you're not comfortable with what they're trying to do, but also not comfortable with trying to mitigate it, as it'll only incentivize them to do worse - then how comfortable are you with them existing? The problem is ad distribution companies here and now. The problem won't be gone until they're gone.

The problem is people are willing to pay for certain products with their attention, via ads, but not with money. Given the choice of paying $1 for a podcast or pirating said podcast, sufficient number of people would not choose the first option to make it a viable business.

I suppose though I pay $18 to go to the movies and they show me 5-10 minutes of ads followed but another 5-10 minutes of trailers. I generally look forward to the trailers but the ads drive me nuts given I paid (guess I should stop going)

Disney back in the 90s threatened to not allow theaters to show their movies if they ran ads. I think that died though

https://www.nytimes.com/1990/02/10/business/disney-bans-comm...

Re: Adblock Radio: An adblocker for live radio streams and podcasts

#242

Post by CodeMage »

snakeOyl wrote: post #165
pavel_lishin wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. People who are adblocking are saying that they are not willing to pay with attention. No. As a person who's adblocking, that is not what I'm saying. I'm perfectly willing to pay with attention; I'm not willing to pay with my data, I'm not willing to be tracked across sites, and I'm not willing to let my browser execute whatever garbage the ad network is sending down the pipe at me.

The alternative to advertising is paid subscription content. I don’t see how you’re going to achieve greater privacy by giving someone your credit card number.

Why? First of all, why must there be a dichotomy here? Second, why must I give each site my credit card number directly? Why can't we do that differently?

The conventional wisdom is that ads are more convenient. I hope that, sooner or later, this will stop being true and we'll have a variety of better ways of supporting content.

Re: Adblock Radio: An adblocker for live radio streams and podcasts

#243

Post by tudelo »

bootlooped wrote: post #234
tudelo wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this sustainable?

Sam Harris' podcast runs entirely on donations, so I think that model is at least viable for certain audience demographics.

I agree, it definitely is sustainable for certain types of content. However, even NPR has donation campaigns where they are running ads for themselves and they also run ads for other companies that support them. I guess if they were forced they could change this habit.

Re: Adblock Radio: An adblocker for live radio streams and podcasts

#244

Post by gowld »

munk-a wrote: post #235
lotsofpulp wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is people are willing to pay for certain products with their attention, via ads, but not with money. Given the choice of paying $1 for a podcast or pirating said podcast, sufficient number of people would not choose the first option to make it a viable business.

I don't get where people found this expectation to be paid for random crap thrown out into the world. Once upon a time a lot of the things that are ad-supported now would be considered hobbies that people did because they like to do them, there wouldn't be any sort of expectation of recouping losses you were putting money into your activity in exchange for the joy of doing it. Now everything has become much more mone…

How do we know which work deserves to be paid for? Will you publish a master list for everyone?

Re: Adblock Radio: An adblocker for live radio streams and podcasts

#245

Post by TeMPOraL »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #232
TeMPOraL wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coffee and liquor are made of matter, not information, and thus cannot be infinitely copied for near-zero energy expenditure. This is what gives them a practical price floor.

This is all speculation and without knowing concrete numbers, one can't make any definitive statements about why coffee costs $x and a podcast costs $y. I'm sure performing quality research costs many man hours, traveling, opportunity costs for stories that don't pan out, legal costs, etc. At the end of the day, however, all you need is the fact that there are no successful paid podcasts, and the most successful ones…

> This is all speculation and without knowing concrete numbers, one can't make any definitive statements about why coffee costs $x and a podcast costs $y.

There are economic principles, though. In competitive markets, price is roughly what the market will bear. Physical goods have a price floor, because you can't sustainably sell such goods for below manufacturing costs. Digital goods scale for free, which removes any realistic price ceiling - that's why piracy exists, and that's why there's a market pressure to make the price close to $0.

> Perhaps the problem is that it can't compete in the same environment with media that uses advertising.

This is precisely the problem, in my opinion. Moreover, there's no actual market pressure - only creator's own ethics - to offer ad-free, paid version. With the current market landscape, if you're offering a paid product, you can only gain by adding advertising to it.

Re: Adblock Radio: An adblocker for live radio streams and podcasts

#246

Post by SkyBelow »

amrrs wrote: post #41
dest wrote: post #3

Hello, author of Adblock Radio here. Thanks for posting this. I can answer questions if you have any. You can read more on the context of this project in this article: https://www.adblockradio.com/blog/2018/11/15/designing-audio...

I know we don't want to see / hear ads. But at the same time, these ads on the podcast are making livelihoods/income for those content creators and If we strip that off of them, saying I don't like ads but hey I do like your content. Where do you think we can have the line?

Maybe it will cause improvements in how ads are done.

I buy lots of games of certain genres. I'm always wanting to know about similar games in those genres that match my taste. But almost all game ads are for the major big games that I generally either don't buy or already know about and will buy ad or not.

Ads that inform me of new games that meet my taste will easily convert to sells far beyond the rate of standard ads. But such ads rarely exist at all, the closest thing being sponsored reviews but even those I generally have to know about to look up.

But at the same time, I want these relevant ads without giving up medical information, health information, relationship status, political views, or similar such information.

Re: Adblock Radio: An adblocker for live radio streams and podcasts

#247

Post by CodeMage »

Konnstann wrote: post #193
La1n wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would not cry over companies going bankrupt that sell products that I need to see ads for to realise I need or want them. Not every single company would go bust for many businesses provide things people need or want without having been exposed to ads. Edit: Corrected autocorrect

So the only companies you would want to exist are the ones that have monopolies (or close to) in their markets? I would much rather see marketing from competitors, so I could at least have a launching point to do my own research.

Presenting ads and marketing as a line of defense from monopolies is disingenuous.

Re: Adblock Radio: An adblocker for live radio streams and podcasts

#248

Post by dmix »

Fargren wrote: post #238
dmix wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s nice. Do you use gmail and other services? Because those were built and delivered for free based on the same ideas you dislike.

I find this argument very weak. Should communists not buy anything? Should anarchists not use roads? When your political beliefs are at odds with the current legal framework, you have no choice but to compromise to some degree. That doesn't mean you don't actually believe what you claim.

My point was it comes from a entitled position. I'm not making the absolutist position, nor am I dismissing all advertising like OP, but these business models exist for a reason and that is why we have so many of our products online.

It's easy for us to use adblockers as the minority of technical users, but that's a privilege based on the other 90% still seeing them (which I personally see nothing wrong with and clearly most publishers dont want to poke the bear either).

Otherwise of course people would love to have everything free plus no ads. But ads built and paid for a lot of good things on the internet, which wouldn't have been possible had they all expected payment or other models.

I'm all for pushing Google et al to be less aggressive with ads and make the web more usable and not requiring adblockers in order to have basic performance. But I don't disparage advertising as a whole because I understand the tradeoffs.

Re: Adblock Radio: An adblocker for live radio streams and podcasts

#249

Post by SkyBelow »

diffeomorphism wrote: post #15

Neat software, but I think this is less defensible than other ad blockers. With web ad blockers you protect against tracking, privacy violations and potentially malware and thus don't see "unacceptable ads". In contrast this seems to be about blocking ads just for the sake of blocking ads.

Many ads are justifiable to block in and of themselves because of the message they send.

"Do you have ugly crooked yellow teeth..." Why do we need to tell people that crooked teeth are inherently ugly. This sort of add is the reason we have girls under 10 worrying about getting braces when their dentist never even mentioned the idea and who are whitening their teeth.

Not all are that bad, and some ads exist just to inform. But given that someone doesn't know until they have already had to listen to the ad, it makes simple enough to justify.

Re: Adblock Radio: An adblocker for live radio streams and podcasts

#250

Post by TeMPOraL »

gowld wrote: post #244
munk-a wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get where people found this expectation to be paid for random crap thrown out into the world. Once upon a time a lot of the things that are ad-supported now would be considered hobbies that people did because they like to do them, there wouldn't be any sort of expectation of recouping losses you were putting money into your activity in exchange for the joy of doing it. Now everything has become much more mone…

How do we know which work deserves to be paid for? Will you publish a master list for everyone?

The works GP criticizes still aren't being paid for. If you're serving something as "free with ads", you aren't being paid for your creative work, you're being paid for finding victims and delivering them to advertisers.
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