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The correct amount of ads is zero

manuelmoreale.com

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Re: The correct amount of ads is zero

#331

Post by carlosjobim »

miki123211 wrote: post #192

To me, being anti-ads is being anti-poor, plain and simple. The advertising model makes the rich subsidize services for the poor, and I think that's a very good thing, and many people underappreciate the extend to which it happens. On that note, I'm somewhat annoyed that we're culturally ok with people who use online services and block ads, and yet we're not ok with people who ride on public transit and don't buy tic…

In theory maybe, but in practice no, since ad free is usually extremely cheap. If you can't afford to pay the ad free subscription you're not poor, you're desperate.

Re: The correct amount of ads is zero

#332

Post by paulcole »

> The correct amount of ads for a publication that’s directly supported is zero

You are not the only one directly supporting the publication

> you don’t get to double dip and also sell my data to your advertisers and earn more on the side

Yes they do. You get the option to cancel.

Re: The correct amount of ads is zero

#333

Post by [deleted] »

ulrikrasmussen wrote: post #97
contrast wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re making a very different point to the article. The article is about how to pay for content, your point is that you don’t want to pay for content at all.

You can use uBlock and pay your content creators via Patreon if they have one. I believe that the ad-based freemium business model is harmful to society and unfixable due to the incentives it creates to engage and enrage rather than entertain and inform. So, I use uBlock to use YouTube for free to explicitly drain it of resources without giving Google any ad income, and then I pay the creators that I like using other…

[deleted]

Re: The correct amount of ads is zero

#334

Post by XCSme »

Sammi wrote: post #319
XCSme wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How else do you find out about new stuff, or recommendations, or things you never considered before? How do you find out about new movies, concerts, etc.? Most customers don't know themselves that a solution to their problem (which they might not even notice) exists. Manipulative ads are bad, yes. But ads that expand your knowledge of what's available in the world are good in my opinion.

I wanted to know about headphones that have high sound quality yesterday and you know what I did to find out? I googled it. I found out about ChatGPT and became a paying subscriber in january 2023, because it was all over hckrnews, youtube, twitter and tech media in general. New stuff and recommendations are everywhere. They are even a form of entertainment themselves. I watch several tech channels on youtube just to…

I think that's a good point, and it does make me doubt my initial comment.

One issue now, on a world without ads, is what incentive would also those actors have to provide you with that information? Search engine, review websites, YouTube channels, etc. Of course, we could pay them for this information. They could also have affiliate links, but doesn't then it become an ad?

I think we hate ads now simply because they are implemented poorly and there's a lot of low quality, deceiving ads for useless products.

I play table-tennis a lot, and my shoes are always wet after a session, I usually left them outside to dry, but it doesn't work in bad weather (which is common here). I then saw an ad for shoe-fresh (a dry rack/sanitizer for your shoes), I got one, and it has completely solved this problem. Maybe I could have found about it in a different way, but this is how I found it.

Re: The correct amount of ads is zero

#335

Post by ajsnigrutin »

dspillett wrote: post #247
jillesvangurp wrote: post #44

It's why I use Firefox and avoid situations where I might get exposed to annoying ads. I was watching some Amazon Prime recently (the new rings of power season). Pretty OK and completely ad free experience. Except I noticed these weird cuts every few minutes. It took me quite a while to realize that Amazon introduced ads some time ago for Amazon prime and uBlock origin was doing a great job of simply blocking them. H…

I'm sort of with you here, but not… > I use Firefox and avoid situations where I might get exposed to annoying ads. > I don't pay any websites/blogs for subscriptions for articles either. While some content creators do it for love, art, whatever, others do need an income stream to keep going. I'm fine with blocking annoying ads (pop-ups, forced interstitials, autoplaying audio, …) but basic image-and-some-text-on-the…

"We" didn't start this, "they" did.

We had some text ads, maybe a banner at the top/bottom of a site, and that was it... that was "the middle ground", they got the ads, we didn't have to block them. Then they added more ads and more ads and more ads, and animated gifs and more of them, and videos, and videos with sound, and overlaid ads, and overlaid ads with unskippable video and audio, and more and more... and in the end, a lot of us blocked them.

They had their chance, they decided that the option they wanted was to abuse the viewer with a huge amount of very bad ads on every goddamn site they visited, and now (for some of us), it's over, we're blocking ads.

If they stayed at the one, two ads per site, I wouldn't even notice them,... now, when I do (because there's just too many of them), I immediately install an adblock on every machine (parents, relatives,...) that I have to use a browser on.

Re: The correct amount of ads is zero

#336

Post by paulcole »

eqvinox wrote: post #280
shortformblog wrote: post #265

Stances like this probably feel good to write out, but they miss the reality that when running a media business, relying on one revenue stream is dangerous. That’s why newspapers had classified ads, even though they charged a nominal fee to subscribe. People won’t pay $5 a day to subscribe to a newspaper, but the ads subsidize enough of it to make it so that a paid subscription is accessible to more people. On the in…

I think you're missing the point. There's a reasonable number of people who are willing to pay for content like this, but only if they actually get an ad-free experience in exchange. The business decision The Verge needs to make is whether they want to try to reach these people or not, since these people won't pay for a model that still has ads. (There could of course be 2 subscription levels at different prices, one…

> There's a reasonable number of people who are willing to pay for content like this, but only if they actually get an ad-free experience in exchange.

I guarantee that the majority of these zealous anti-ad people will not subscribe to an ad-free service for The Verge.

For the most part, their hobby is not subscribing to online publications, it’s complaining about the subscriptions at online publications that they would almost certainly never subscribe to.

And yes, I understand that this doesn’t apply to the ones of people who will reply here claiming that they would never do this.

Re: The correct amount of ads is zero

#337

Post by XCSme »

XCSme wrote: post #334
Sammi wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wanted to know about headphones that have high sound quality yesterday and you know what I did to find out? I googled it. I found out about ChatGPT and became a paying subscriber in january 2023, because it was all over hckrnews, youtube, twitter and tech media in general. New stuff and recommendations are everywhere. They are even a form of entertainment themselves. I watch several tech channels on youtube just to…

I think that's a good point, and it does make me doubt my initial comment. One issue now, on a world without ads, is what incentive would also those actors have to provide you with that information? Search engine, review websites, YouTube channels, etc. Of course, we could pay them for this information. They could also have affiliate links, but doesn't then it become an ad? I think we hate ads now simply because they…

Another example is computer games. I got No Man's Sky recently because it was discounted on Steam, and I always wanted to try it. I would consider the pop-up you get when you launch steam, and the discounts showed in the store to also be "ads". I am enjoying the (still buggy) game so far.

Re: The correct amount of ads is zero

#338

Post by dspillett »

cuddlyogre wrote: post #275
dspillett wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sort of with you here, but not… > I use Firefox and avoid situations where I might get exposed to annoying ads. > I don't pay any websites/blogs for subscriptions for articles either. While some content creators do it for love, art, whatever, others do need an income stream to keep going. I'm fine with blocking annoying ads (pop-ups, forced interstitials, autoplaying audio, …) but basic image-and-some-text-on-the…

The problem with allowing "basic image-and-some-text-on-the-page adverts" is that you also allow "pop-ups, forced interstitials, autoplaying audio, …" and malware attacks since they all pull from the same pool by default. They track you like an animal across the entire web to learn your conscious and unconscious desires and insecurities and weaknesses so they can most effectively take your time and money and attentio…

That is pretty much what I said:

> I'm not against advertising as such, where it is relevant to what I am looking at (or even when it is arbitrary/random), what I object to is the stalking that is inherent in the current adtech world.

The ideal is for the advert to be served from the main source, much like a sponsored segment in a cast is just in the cast, no extra external access to do any tracking from.

If the site I'm actually visiting itself starts serving malware like shite, then I go from not trusting their “partners” and being wary of them by association, to really not wanting to be there at all and adding them to my DNS blocklist just-in-case.

Re: The correct amount of ads is zero

#339

Post by manuelmoreale »

akoboldfrying wrote: post #12
nox101 wrote: post #11

Disagree. Would I like zero ads? Yes, do I think a company should be required to offer a zero ad service for money? No. If you don't like that they have ads even if you pay then don't use the service. People still subscribe to newspaper even though they are full of ads. They paid money, they got an ad full paper. People still subscribe to cable TV even though it's full of ads. People still buy magazines (paid for the…

Hard agree (with you, that is). It's just another case of people confusing "What I personally want" with "What actually leads to a sustainable business/ecosystem". I honestly think people get confused about this because we are so accustomed to getting what we want.

I honestly do not understand this point. If they offer me a 50/year sub that is not sustainable without extra ads then adjust the fucking price.

Set a price to make it sustainable.

Offer a 50/year plan with limited ads and a 200/year with no ads and be upfront about why those are the costs.

It’s not rocket science.

Re: The correct amount of ads is zero

#340

Post by magicalhippo »

Sammi wrote: post #319
XCSme wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How else do you find out about new stuff, or recommendations, or things you never considered before? How do you find out about new movies, concerts, etc.? Most customers don't know themselves that a solution to their problem (which they might not even notice) exists. Manipulative ads are bad, yes. But ads that expand your knowledge of what's available in the world are good in my opinion.

I wanted to know about headphones that have high sound quality yesterday and you know what I did to find out? I googled it. I found out about ChatGPT and became a paying subscriber in january 2023, because it was all over hckrnews, youtube, twitter and tech media in general. New stuff and recommendations are everywhere. They are even a form of entertainment themselves. I watch several tech channels on youtube just to…

You're talking about placed ads. The OP was talking about all advertising.

Viewing a review on a site where the reviewer got sent a set of headphones to review is also advertisement. It's just not a placed ad.

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