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Gwern's Law: Ads cost you a tenth of your users

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Re: Gwern's Law: Ads cost you a tenth of your users

#311

Post by JohnFen »

radium3d wrote: post #201
majewsky wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Nintendo Switch's start screen has ads on it. When you turn the console on from sleep mode, it shows flashy images entitled "Featured News" on the left third of the lock screen. [1] I tried to disable it, but apparently you cannot unsubscribe from the preloaded "news" channels. When I play Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, the in-game experience is mostly ad-free, but there is a side quest on my quest log that…

I think an ad outside of a game is fine if it's not too excessive, but I too was disappointed to see cross-game "ad" content being baked into The Legend of Zelda DLC.

> I think an ad outside of a game is fine if it's not too excessive

I don't, if the ad is on a device or program that I've paid cash money for.

Re: Gwern's Law: Ads cost you a tenth of your users

#312

Post by JohnFen »

rdiddly wrote: post #59
Reedx wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Did your traffic increase ~10%? It followed the same pattern as I've seen for years. > Enough to not push away users, but not too much to deter users altogether. That could be. I might've had a goldilocks amount.

Instituting advertising is guaranteed to reach your existing user base right away; those who hate ads will see them right away and quit right away. Removing advertising doesn't have the same kind of immediate effect because the "audience" for it is people who haven't even heard of your app yet, and have no idea whether you're ad-free or not. (Here I'm discounting the possibility that there's a bunch of people waiting…

Well said. Plus, there are us diehards who simply gave up on all mobile gaming entirely, because the vast majority have ads. That makes it hard enough to find acceptable games that it's just not worth looking for games.

Re: Gwern's Law: Ads cost you a tenth of your users

#313

Post by JohnFen »

dahart wrote: post #234

Are the 10%-15% who bail free users, or paying users? Number of free users is only a good metric if you have ads. Without ads, a better metric is needed, like revenue. The other thing we need is a real alternative. Ads are more or less unanimously not beloved, but bootstrapping revenue and funding are real problems. Worse than losing 10% of your customers is losing 100% of your customers because you can’t afford to s…

> No matter how much everyone dislikes ads, they aren’t going away until there’s a way to fund your site/org/business.

The problem isn't that there aren't other ways of generating revenue. There are lots of them. The problem is that carrying ads is the easiest way -- it requires almost no development effort.

Re: Gwern's Law: Ads cost you a tenth of your users

#314

Post by JohnFen »

DuskStar wrote: post #131
therealdrag0 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don't you use an adblocker or pay for YouTube premium to support your content creators.

At least in my case, the SquareSpace/NordVPN/Audible/etc ads aren't preroll - they're embedded in the middle of the video by the content creators . Which is really irritating, because I DO pay for YouTube premium... (by way of GPM All Access, grandfathered in)

Yes, that's supremely annoying. But, at least that sort of advertising doesn't track you, and given that YouTube has seriously restricted the ability for content creators to monetize using YouTube mechanisms themselves, I cut them a little slack on this.

Re: Gwern's Law: Ads cost you a tenth of your users

#315

Post by TomMarius »

JohnFen wrote: post #307
TomMarius wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They in fact frequently are. There are huge communities dedicated to that on the Internet. BTW a lot of the previously illegal and unthinkable treatments these people used have just been legalised in the EU, using MDMA etc.

Indeed. And although I wouldn't recommend the self-medicating route, it's hard to deny that there are some people who get much better results doing that than getting "official" medical help.

Professionals can be found even though its illegal. I wouldn't recommend self-medication either.

Re: Gwern's Law: Ads cost you a tenth of your users

#316

Post by NikkiA »

umvi wrote: post #32

I believe it. There are a lot of games that I downloaded from the app store and really liked initially. However, I noticed a pattern. At first, ads seemed to be optional (i.e double your gems by watching an ad!) However, after about 10 minutes of playing, I'd see an ad. No big deal. But then it got more and more aggressive. Pretty soon there was an ad after every single level, (plus the bonus ad if you want to double…

At least on iOS, ads that you opt to watch may be unskippable, but ads that the app foists on you should be skippable after 5 seconds with a >> or X button.

That said; there are a lot of ads that violate the rules and hide buttons or even crash in such a way as to make closing the app the only option other than installing the advertised game/app.

Re: Gwern's Law: Ads cost you a tenth of your users

#317

Post by NikkiA »

1000units wrote: post #137
leggomylibro wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of my favorite mobile games (an old Popcap title) used to have a version which cost ~$10 and was just a no-frills port of the original. No ads, no permissions beyond file storage, no issues working offline. But you can't buy that anymore; now the only option is a 'free' version which has ads that you cannot pay away. Fortunately I can still download the old version from the app store; now it is called 'zzSUNSET '…

I think my conscience would be more satisfied working in porn than mobile gaming.

I've worked in (mobile) porn and the gambling industries; porn was more ethical by far, even if the weirdos were slightly more common (there are a lot of really really weird/creepy 'punters' in the FOB industry)

Re: Gwern's Law: Ads cost you a tenth of your users

#318

Post by dest »

sesteel wrote: post #174
emit_time wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve come to hate ads for how much they try to get me to buy things I don’t need. Sure you can say something about willpower whatever, but constantly being bombarded by them is horrible. I’m pretty happy with what I have, I don’t need all this stuff. But advertising makes me want stuff I don’t need. I don’t feel bad about blocking advertising to improve my quality of life.

I don't even pay attention to them; they are just there as visual noise. I worry a lot about the world we've created and where this is all heading. I like to wrangle some of these problems, maybe create a "no ad" network. You pay into a pool and the money is doled out to various businesses based on what you spend your time doing: games, websites, etc.

Flattr? Patreon? Google contributor?

Re: Gwern's Law: Ads cost you a tenth of your users

#319

Post by huac »

sesteel wrote: post #169

I feel like advertisements ruin everything. I remember driving onto the my air force base and being thankful that all the visual pollution was gone. It was like stepping into another world. Now the internet has ads everywhere. I find the attention economy awful and dystopian. I'd gladly pay to never see another ad.

I felt the same way when driving through Cuba: some billboards, but all with government propaganda, and none advertising products.

Re: Gwern's Law: Ads cost you a tenth of your users

#320

Post by dahart »

JohnFen wrote: post #313
dahart wrote: post #234

Are the 10%-15% who bail free users, or paying users? Number of free users is only a good metric if you have ads. Without ads, a better metric is needed, like revenue. The other thing we need is a real alternative. Ads are more or less unanimously not beloved, but bootstrapping revenue and funding are real problems. Worse than losing 10% of your customers is losing 100% of your customers because you can’t afford to s…

> No matter how much everyone dislikes ads, they aren’t going away until there’s a way to fund your site/org/business. The problem isn't that there aren't other ways of generating revenue. There are lots of them. The problem is that carrying ads is the easiest way -- it requires almost no development effort.

That doesn’t answer my question. The question isn’t what ways there are to generate revenue, it’s what is the right metric. Number of users dropping doesn’t mean that revenue is dropping, so it’s not a great metric to demonstrate that ads are bad. If we want to show that adding ads to a site is damaging, we have to show that it’s actually damaging, rather than you lose a fraction of the people who were mooching anyway.

I’m not sure I agree there are lots of ways to generate revenue, and more importantly that there are reliable ways to generate revenue when bootstrapping a small company. If there were reliable ways to do it, ads wouldn’t be such a big problem. The scourge of ads is evidence that finding revenue sources isn’t reliable.

The main sources of funding for small companies are: loans, grants, personal savings, friends & family, angels, VCs, sales, and ads. Sales and ads are the only sustainable long term strategies unless you’re going for government funding of research or a public service. Sales requires a product with market fit, i.e., a bootstrapped company. For most early stage companies that leaves only ads as a potential positive long-term revenue stream. What other options are there?

Making money with ads requires an audience, which requires having something of value. In that sense, it does require development effort. Maybe installing the ad into an iframe is easy, but getting enough people to your site isn’t trivial.

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