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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

#591

Post by johnnyanmac »

knorker wrote: post #419
bogwog wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> miss the reality that when running a media business, relying on one revenue stream is dangerous. Why would I, as a consumer, compromise on what I want to make some MBA's life easier? That almost sounds like corporate welfare. Businesses sign up to take risks the moment they're created. A news organization doesn't need to be in business. There is nothing unjust or morally wrong with letting a business shutdown becau…

Voting with our wallets got us infowars and two major fake news groups of media (mainstream and not). Why should you want some MBA's life to be easy? So that it's feasible to keep producing what you actually want. I just wish it were possible to pay $1 for an article whose headline sounds interesting, or someone recommended. Subscribe, even with a free trial? Pass. The free market is great. But we should not deny it…

>Voting with our wallets got us infowars and two major fake news groups of media

yes. that's the cost of freedom. Stupidity is freedom as well.

>Why should you want some MBA's life to be easy?

I want good creators compensated for good stories. MBAs will get paid no matter what. that's sort of what they minmax for. And they don't care what industry they suck off of.

>I just wish it were possible to pay $1 for an article whose headline sounds interesting, or someone recommended

$1 for an article would be way overkill for 99.999% of the population. the microtransaction approach can't work because you really can't charge much more than a dollar for any digital transaction to begin with. You can always go for the "tokens" approach, but that's a much older and assumedly unpopular model.

>The free market is great. But we should not deny it when it leads to bad outcomes.

At the same time, denying the free market because it doesn't go the way we want just makes us sound hypocritcal. Fortunately, most results of this model do not give us scams and propoganda. There's enough to discuss without going into the fringes.

Re: The correct amount of ads is zero

#592

Post by johnnyanmac »

bogwog wrote: post #431
knorker wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voting with our wallets got us infowars and two major fake news groups of media (mainstream and not). Why should you want some MBA's life to be easy? So that it's feasible to keep producing what you actually want. I just wish it were possible to pay $1 for an article whose headline sounds interesting, or someone recommended. Subscribe, even with a free trial? Pass. The free market is great. But we should not deny it…

The fake news situation, like all (well, most at least) failures of the free market are solvable with regulations. I don't think any rational person would disagree that it should be illegal to deliberately spread misinformation and lies. We banned selling cigarettes to minors, we banned drugs, we (theoretically) banned monopolies, and we should be able to ban fake news. But it is currently a political weapon being wi…

>I don't think any rational person would disagree that it should be illegal to deliberately spread misinformation and lies.

It's called "bait" and not "yellow journalism" for a reason. misleading is not the same as misinformation. It's a petty subsect of journalism that really isn't serious enough for any formal regulation to be made on.

Re: The correct amount of ads is zero

#593

Post by johnnyanmac »

alexvitkov wrote: post #411
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…

This really doesn't add up to me. I don't have the numbers, but I would assume that: 1. A very small percentage of website visitors will end up paying for a subscription. 2. They make way less than $5 per user per month from ads. The money they'd lose by providing an ad-free experience to paying customers should be a rounding error. Removing ads will also increase conversion, but who knows whether or not that will be…

2) is because of 1). They make way less than $5/user/month, but here's thousands of users to close that gap. So the paid users are a smaller slice than you'd guess at first blush.

>if you need to charge anything close to $5 per user per day to keep such an operation running, you should be out of business.

That's just American labor in a nutshell. if a jounralist is making full time national minimum wage ($7.25, 40 hours a week), that's very roughly $1000/month post tax. that very pooly paid jounalist needs 200 subcribers to sustain them. \

costs are going up, but readership and revenue is not. This doesn't end well for anyone. And yes, many businesses are dying right now.

>I don't particularly care about their "business reality"

if you don't care about them, I'm not sure why they'd care about your opinions on how they run.

Re: The correct amount of ads is zero

#594

Post by johnnyanmac »

wat10000 wrote: post #481
adamc wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Youtube does not do it. You stop seeing youtube's ads, which are obnoxious, but you still see the actual content author's ads.

YouTube shows you what you ask it to show you. The vast majority of content has no ads. You can easily go forever without seeing one. That’s like saying Verizon has ads because I see ads on the internet.

>The vast majority of content has no ads.

you're only pedantically correct in the sense that most videos on the internet have under 10 views.

Practically speaking, I'd be surprised if you can watch any video from a content creator with > 10k subs and not have some sort of sponsored segment.

Re: The correct amount of ads is zero

#595

Post by johnnyanmac »

adamc wrote: post #466
wat10000 wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of subscription services out there that are ad-free. YouTube does it, I think all the various music streaming services do it, most if not all of the video streaming services have an ad-free tier. Beyond the media realm, my cell phone service doesn’t package ads with my monthly subscription, nor my home internet service. I could go on. What narrow idea of “a media business” must have ads even when you…

Youtube does not do it. You stop seeing youtube's ads, which are obnoxious, but you still see the actual content author's ads.

I don' really mind CC sponsors because that supports the actual creator, not Google's. Seems to be the best deal for everyone involved.

Re: The correct amount of ads is zero

#596

Post by johnnyanmac »

Contax wrote: post #560
wkat4242 wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah this is the problem. You still need sponsorblock to make it watchable even if you subscribe. Then you might as well go the full way and adblock. If YouTube would force content creators to upload sponsor-free versions for premium subscribers, the subscription might actually be worth it.

It'd be nice if, at the very least, they were asked to be upfront and put a "sponsored" disclaimer on titles so we could make an informed choice.

They do have that. Any video you click in with a sponsored segment says "includes paid promotion" on the top left corner.

Re: The correct amount of ads is zero

#597

Post by LargoLasskhyfv »

knorker wrote: post #587
LargoLasskhyfv wrote: post #584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are so many articles which have 'interesting' clickbaity headlines, that I DO NOT WANT to pay even 1$/€ for every single one. Maybe 1 to 10ct, via legal microtransactions, not some cryptocurrencyshit. If they don't get that, and are too stupid to push for that, with all their journalistic force and might, maybe they aren't that important, and never were to begin with? Let them all burn in a bonfire of their ver…

> There are so many articles which have 'interesting' clickbaity headlines Sure. But there are many good ones too. Not just random ones, but take FT or Economist. Several times a month I see a headline I'm interested in, and I do trust them to not bait-and-switch the article. Maybe I'd read it and conclude it was not worth it, but that's not the same thing. But they both want to sign me up for a subscription. No. I'l…

There is SEPA with instant payment in the European Union, which has to be available at no additional cost. Which in practice already works for micropayments, as can be seen by various entities booking 1ct to verify the validity of the account holder/data.

Amazon does this, Aliexpress does it, many others already do this. Why can't the effing press/media do it?

Similar applies to US-American ACH.

But no, those r-tards always want to sell their bundles and abonnements.

Re: The correct amount of ads is zero

#598

Post by johnnyanmac »

wkat4242 wrote: post #539
wat10000 wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t really care about sponsor segments. They’re quickly and easily skipped. Sponsor-free videos for premium subscribers would be nice but it’s a pretty small thing.

I do hate them, especially when it's more than one. And when skipping it's hard to find the end of them. I have to say I find watching videos a chore anyway, I'll always prefer written content. But often it's not available or not as well suited (eg for a review it's good to see the product). But I would never pay for premium if it means I still get ads, it doesn't matter where they come from.

I have never seen two sponsored segments in a single video. I think that goes against most standard sponsored agreements. Those may just be regular ads.

>I'll always prefer written content. But often it's not available or not as well suited

Makes sense, this whole post is because text ads is proving hard to monetize. Menawhile, video is flourishing for now.

>it doesn't matter where they come from.

Matters to me. I wanna support the little guy with my time, not the trillion dollar conglomerate.

Another fun fact, but your youtube premium sub also spreads out some extra revenue to whichever creators you watch that month.

Re: The correct amount of ads is zero

#599

Post by johnnyanmac »

ProfessorLayton wrote: post #536
wat10000 wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YouTube and Spotify both do “subscribe to remove ads.” If they’re not big, who is?

YouTube Premium costs 90% as much as a standard Netflix subscription, but with one major difference: Netflix needs to spend ~17B on content per year to collect that $15.49/mo. Youtube gets content for free and pays out a revenue share. If they also had to spend billions on content, they would have to charge more than $13.99/mo.

well it's not really "free" in that case, is it? The other issue is that those payouts vary a lot on whatever is ad-friendly and various other channel statistics we never see in public.

But yes, Youtube (to my charaign. There's loads of problems) is very much the "indie scene" in comparison, where it doesn't need highly produced million dollar sitcoms to bring in viewers.

Re: The correct amount of ads is zero

#600

Post by johnnyanmac »

ndriscoll wrote: post #490
wat10000 wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No they don’t.

Apparently they were showing some users football ads and support said that's expected. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42131778

Youtube =/= Youtube Music. I can't speak to the latter ( I miss Google Play Music), but I have yet to receive a normal ad on Youtube premium.
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