There are ads in the paper newspaper I subscribe to as well. Real reporting and quality writing don't come cheaply, and that hasn't changed just because the delivery method did. Probably neither the author nor I would be willing to pay for a subscription without ad subsidies.
It is also quite disrespectful considering the tracking etc. that comes with it. How many more subscribers would they get if they didn't treat them as garbage?
basically nothing. if you never click the ad you are making them a fraction of a cent each view. I doubt one person would even make the site a dollar after a lifetime of reading.
According to the New York Times latest earnings call, subscriptions account for 2/3 of their revenue. So ballpark roughly 50% more than the current subscription price would be necessary to maintain revenue at the same subscriber count sans other revenue streams.
Revenue = subscriber revenue + ad revenue from ads shown to subscribers + ad revenue from ads shown to non-subscribers
The suggestions was to eliminate the middle piece and increase the subscription price to make up for it in the first piece. That's still leaves the last piece.
This argument is getting really tired, it's true of literally every service online. Yes there are loopholes, no they don't matter. The barrier is just high enough that a great many people just pay up.
The above article also states that digital advertising revenue only accounted for 37 percent of total advertising revenue. So that means digital advertising revenue is at most 12% of total revenue. Furthermore, it is unstated how much of digital advertising revenue comes from paid subscribers vs unpaid visitors.
If we assumed, for the sake of argument, that half of digital advertising revenue was from paid and half unpaid, then cutting ads for paid subscribers would be doable with only about a 10% increase in price.
That’s unlikely to be true, some publications such as Ars Technica let you pay for an ad free tier.
What’s more likely is that the subscription price does in fact cover costs and that advertising revenue is seen as a nice benefit on top that can be grown creatively without any accountability or backlash.
"Probably neither the author nor I would be willing to pay for a subscription without ad subsidies."
There are a lot of counter examples to this. Hulu, Spotify, Ars Technica, YouTube Premium, etc... People are willing and able to pay for ad-free content.
Because there's a difference between reading professionally produced news and watching contributed videos? Is there a reason you think they are the same?
I think once it's shown that people are generally willing to pay for the services they use to be ad-free the onus goes back to you to prove why news is a special case to which that trend does not apply. Otherwise we get into an argument black hole where you could infinitely claim the things in question were different than the counter-examples given.
It seems unlikely that the foregone revenue would be more than about 10% of the regular subscription price.
This is based on other posts in this thread that talk about a $84/year subscription and $4-$15/year ad revenue. Since that was a reference to Facebook revenue, I imagine it would be a decent upper bound.
It reminds me of how people say that it's impossible to provide fresh produce without paying people below minimum wage. In lieu of common sense, it depends on numbers, which don't need to be precise, but you can't just handwave.
I'm inclined to believe the true story is simply, as others state, that no matter what the ad revenue is, it's X% more and nobody wants to give it up if they don't have to.
Nobody has a problem with paper or paper-like ads, aka ads don’t stalk you, that the newspaper has actually vetted, and is happy to have its name associated with.
The problem is that web ads are nothing like that. They are orders of magnitude more scummy, can’t be vetted in advance and stalk the shit out of you in order to serve you “better” ads next time, whatever the hell “better” means in advertiser’s perverted minds.
>Real reporting and quality writing
unfortunately I rarely see either of those in any news outlet. Most of it is regurgitated press releases and things that I don't care about.
We've asked you repeatedly to stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News. If you can't or won't stop, we're going to have to ban your account, so please fix this.
The answer may not be pleasing, but it's true: because "paid subscribers" represent a valuable advertising demographic/segment. They are nearly certain you are human traffic, and you have enough disposable income that you pay for news.
You can pretty much make this argument for everything - Ferraris should be plastered by LCDs with ads then. Business class airplanes filled with blinking video ads. Entrances to highend butiques crowded with people pushing ad leaflets into rich peoples hands....
This does happen in other places. Do you ever notice that your in-flight magazine has ads? You've already paid for the flight. Your in-theater movie kicks off with trailers and previews -- you have already paid for the movie ticket. And so on.
This already happens on Air Canada (although at least the ads are not personalized). Before each movie or show you play on your IFE screen in economy class, they make you watch two 30 seconds ads. I was very annoyed, especially since AC tickets are already overpriced (little/no competition on domestic flights in Canada).
If there IFE system is like all the others that I've experienced so far, you'll lose more time trying to find the start of the movie than you'd lose by letting the ads run :(
This happens in the back of cabs in a lot of places I seem to remember and it’s incredibly difficult to switch off... we essentially are heading for some super weird dystopian sci-fi film right now. It’s terrifying.
Passengers in airline seats seem to make advertisers drool as you can't get much more of a captive audience and for that long in nearly any other situation.
I know for a fact, this is all coming and has already started, and is going to get even more invasive.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the security theatre before boarding and advertisement brainwash after getting to the seats would start to provoke fury sprees among some at least passengers.
Don't worry, they'll be monitoring your sentiment during boarding and passengers that appear agitated will be calmly denied access to board. And you'll be monitored in your seat as well during the flight.
It's not Orwell's imagination anymore, it's reality. Only privacy law can stop it, maybe.
> they'll be monitoring your sentiment during boarding and passengers that appear agitated will be calmly denied access to board. And you'll be monitored in your seat as well during the flight.
Disappointing is that this is the more likely outcome, rather than easing the sensory overload, stress, and discomfort.
To be fair, there are attempts at this being made too. But they come in a weird fashion, for example - seats get smaller but are higher quality. Air quality on airplanes and lighting has generally improved but flights are getting longer.
It’s an interesting balance but it always reminds me that flying through the sky in a tin can is not entirely natural.
Of course, some of the security measures are for your comfort and safety as well. It’s just where the line is between for your good and for theirs that is tough to identify.
Ryanair wouldn't pay for the screens to show you ads ;)
They do, however, upsell you in person by making some hate-my-job contracted flight attendants go through the cabin no less than three times trying to sell various things to you.
Ads on the back of he seat in an airplane are very common in European airlines. One of the most obnoxious, intrusive, literally in-your-face ads as it’s 40cm from one’s face with no real option to get away from it.
Not on RyanAir flights you can't. Not unless you're using earplugs. It's hard to sleep when you're constantly being upsold something, including over the announcement system at least 3 times per flight.
Use a page from the inflight magazine (or the safety card) to cover the screen. I do this on flights that insist on keeping the screen on no matter what.
The single most awful thing about flying with Hawaiian Airlines is that they sold out years ago to advertisers. The flight attendants read commercials to the passengers during the safety brief. And lately, there have been some credit card companies advertising this way and so the flight attendants will literally walk up and down the aisles giving every passenger a credit card application. It is foul and atrocious. Just charge $10 more per seat, you goblins.
So what does that mean? That we need to be shoved ads in our faces at every step of our life even if we pay for products? Just because someone wants to make even more money? What's your takeaway here?
The takeaway is that advertisers don't care what you think and do in fact believe that they should shove ads in your face every step of your life, even if you pay for a product.
Welcome to the world. Half the users of this site are actively perpetuating the corporate dystopia we inhabit.
I'm sure they'd start caring if everyone started blocking their ads instead of accepting them. Maybe one day we'll have augmented reality glasses with built in ad blockers; I wonder how they'd react to that.
Talking about advertisers, I think the main qualities we can credit them is grit and smarts.
Block their ads on the web ? you still have them on billboards if they’re local. They’ll mass DM whole regions if it makes economical sense. Your Netflix drama series will start mentionning them in passing. They’ll make ‘news’ pieces with a product CEO saving a baby chimpanzee that was not endangered in the first place.
You know they’ll find a way to your eyeballs by whatever mean, as long as it makes any sense to them.
Assuming we have sufficient control over our augmented reality glasses. If someone like google, MS, facebook, etc corner the market then I'd expect them to insert ads into reality.
I don't have a "takeaway", but the Bezos quote, "Your margin is my opportunity," comes to mind. We live in capitalism, and in this system, "good user experience" only matters insofar as it is profitable for whoever is providing that user experience. If ads for subscribers are so annoying that people stop subscribing, then companies might stop advertising to them. But if they are not annoying enough to affect those numbers, then it isn't that surprising that they try to earn more revenue from their attention. One other way to look at this: perhaps by advertising to subscribers, these publishers can afford to offer a lower subscription cost to their customers. Let's also remember that most publishing companies don't have massive digital revenue scale or growth, compared especially to the big tech companies. And let's also remember that big tech companies like Amazon and Google monetize customers "on the side" six ways from Sunday.
I guess what you are responding to with outrage, I am responding to with a shrug.
It's true - most news and magazine publishing companies are in a place of desperation. The internet has impacted the legacy publishing revenue model so severely that there hasn't been any clear model to pivot to despite two decades of attempts. Many major publishers have folded, many more will fold, and those that survive will eek by on meager subscriber revenue (which isn't as robust or easy to come by as some may think) and increasingly obtrusive programmatic advertising.
> If ads for subscribers are so annoying that people stop subscribing, then companies might stop advertising to them.
It also matters if there is any actual competition that does tings better. Cable TV is having a bad time, in large part it is because of ads, but it is only happening because of the streaming services.
Airlines are a competitive service, but newspapers are not.
Public media and TV in Europe, including the one with the largest budget on the entire planet - German, play and display ads even though are sponsored from compulsory per-household fees.
Is this actually a market inefficiency? Maybe this is an opportunity to discover how humanity can still make information known about products and services without having to make our entire cultures about consumption.
I mean, advertising is about information sharing in a way. Can it be more efficient without clobbering art and media?
Ads are less about "information sharing" and more about manipulation though.
If I think about "information sharing", I'd imagine that the information is the thing of value to be shared and the goal is to enable the recipient to perform their own decisions with and increased base of background information.
However, ads work the other way around: You start with certainly outcomes that you would potential customers arrive at in their decisions and then think which information you can deliver to them to reach that outcome.
Good points. So what does an ad that doesn't have a behavioral component look like, and can they be presented in a different way? And could we still make that effective? Or is it a class of ad that is ethical vs not?
I know I'm way off in the weeds here, just brainstorming.
Well, I don't think it would be an ad anymore, because if the goal is to inform a consumer, the goal can't be to promote a particular product/brand/company.
So maybe something like independently ran price comparison sites would work?
"Company X sells a product Y which is meant to solve the problem Z, and does so through features A, B and C."
That's it. The ad just informed consumers about existence of a particular company and product, made it clear what the product is for, and listed its important qualities (especially differentiating from other similar products).
That's what you do when you actually care to inform, and not manipulate, customers. Since pretty much no ads are like this, I call bullshit when someone says advertising is important because it informs people.
The BBC often congratulates itself on not showing ads. Instead, every radio show is 50% 'trailers' for other BBC things which you'll hear half a dozen times by the end of a workday.
Swedish public service TV is the same. Guess all the 1-hour shows are down to 27 minutes of content or so, leaving huge gaps needing to be filled with some .. air.
Because your point is pretty shallow, to be honest. The simple fact is that such tactics do happen in virtually every situation you described. Ad-metrics are super important to virtually every industry now; it may not be the backbone of these industries, but no one scoffs at the paycheck once it's said and done.
Your point really doesn't add much to a conversation, since its premise is faulty. We accept such advertising on the web because we accept it in virtually every aspect of our lives.
> Because your point is pretty shallow, to be honest. The simple fact is that such tactics do happen in virtually every situation you described.
Not to the same extent. That’s the point, and it’s an interesting question why this happens. What economic factors account for the differences in advertising between these two markets? It’s not “shallow” as your own shallow dismissal alleges.
> Your point really doesn't add much to a conversation, since its premise is faulty.
People who live in glass houses should not throw stones.
Those are race team sponsorships. People pay the owner of the car to put those ads on the car. That’s the exact opposite of the point under discussion: the owner is getting revenue by choosing to put ads on the car, that is much different than Ferrari putting ads on a car you buy in order to make more money for Ferrari. Those sponsor ads make money for the owner of the car/team.
Also I think Enzo Ferrari would argue that the F1 cars and team are the real Ferrari porduct. The road cars are just ads and merchandise for the race team. =P
TBF, the Ferrari IS the ad - for Ferrari and whatever aggregate-lifestyle-image you are promoting.
"Hey everyone, look at how I have succeeded to the point where I can drive car [X]"
Not that there is anything wrong with that, though.
For example - I like to wear the same hiker-couture gear everyday to feel comfortable, functional and good about myself appearance. I am an advertisement for my thinking and decision making capability.
I don't know if Ferraris sold here have this, but many cars sold in Poland have licence plate frame with dealer's name and contact even though you have no agreement with them to advertise their company when you're buying new car. For some (Mitsubishi iirc) they put some kind of semi translucent sticker on your trunk with dealer's name about 2 x 3 inches.
People generally let the dealer sock them with an additional $500 to cover car registration for them (so they don't have to go to the DMV themselves). When this happens, the dealer gets to install the plate for the customer, and they'll throw on the dealer frame at the same time.
After this point, customers don't have much reason to remove the plate or frame unless they really hate the ad, happen to be self-installing a rearview camera or are selling the car.
My car was from a dealer that went bust "Ward Subaru", after a service at a non-dealer service centre it came back with "Doncaster Subaru" frames on it!
Most dealers in the US do this via the license plate frame or stickers on the back. I think most people don't realize that you can remove them (and should). There should be some kind of rent payment for having it on your car.
In the Ferrari case, you just got one huge expensive advertisement of the company. Just because you are not famous. If you'd be famous, then the Ferrari would pay you for wearing their logo. If you are not, you have to pay them lots of money for the same.
Re: Ferraris - Part of the product is the aesthetic and function. The other part is that there are other vehicles just as sexy or cool looking as Ferrari - meaning, if there aren't good alternatives that don't have the advertising then they perhaps could get away with it; what an advertiser would be willing to pay a single fixed ad on a vehicle doesn't really put much of a dent in the cost of that vehicle, however ad revenue in digital form certainly covers a much higher portion of the cost of serving web content. Content that requires a lot of effort to produce however fits less of a Facebook average level of post content. It seems the answer is creating a competitive environment for investigative journalism, and then people will have options - if content is equal - to pay a platform that doesn't have ads.
For free products online that have an ad model, it's the VC complex perpetuating that model heavily - where the money is available initially and to scale quickly (because it's an easy calculation). The mantra isn't just "Move fast and break things" but also seems to be "if I don't do it - someone else will get there first" as part of the desire to be first-to-market (by any means) as a means to reach/capture a few of the main defense mechanisms of economies of scale and network effects; you don't need defense mechanisms if you have a good product however, and have a reasonable cost structure - it sure will be more profitable in the short-term though, not sustainable however. Facebook, Cambridge Analytica et al, perhaps needed to happen to wake people up to understand the importance of accountability and of community, moderation, and such.
We have to decide as a society to not support platforms or organizations who attempt to extract all possible value. This of course creates opportunity for competition, however with perhaps more difficulty once an incumbent has reached large economies of scale and has strong network effects.
If you're a subscriber, you're the most valuable advertising target. You've shown a willingness to pay for stuff on the internet. Furthermore, advertisers are targeting people who read those publications regularly. Subscribers are those people.
If you wanted an ad-free subscription, it would cost substantially more than you currently pay to made up for the lost advertising revenue.
Even if, let's say, you WERE to pay substantially more than what you currently pay, the vendor might see fit to extract the maximum amount of value from you, so serve you adds they will. The only way I think they would not serve you adds is if they would lose more money (customers) if they were to serve adds.
But people have proven they are mostly OK with ads, they don't mind them (since so many services online are fueled by them and people use them).
That's absolutely not true. You could just not use the service. I think what you mean is that you have no way to get the service without the ads, so you're willing to put up with the ads to get the service. Which is the whole point.
> I think what you mean is that you have no way to get the service without the ads, so you're willing to put up with the ads to get the service. Which is the whole point.
Well, that's what I mean. You often can't get the service without ads, as competitors show the same amount of ads.
Hell, these days you can't do anything, be it on-line or in meatspace, without being exposed to a steady stream of ads. There is no choice for ad-free life, unless you take the word "choice" so literally you accept moving to some remote location and living off land as a viable option for regular people.
>If you're a subscriber, you're the most valuable advertising target
Back in the 90s my dad used to buy shit from mail order catalogs. The volume and variety of catalogs he got in return was obscene. Seemingly every day he'd get a new catalog for something.
The restriction on the number of articles is how the news publishers incentivize subscriptions -- subscribing unlocks more articles per week/month/whatever. They are going to advertise either way.
Paper newspapers always had ads too. Subscribers didn't get a different version of the paper without the ads. Ads have been a deeply ingrained part of the news business for over 100 years and they aren't going to stop now.
This seems to be a re-occuring pattern: have ads on a free/cheap service, introduce a paid service, place ads on the paid service, then hope if you hold out long enough people will forget there was a time when your paid service was ad free.
Newspapers and magazines have always included ads along with the subscription price. Difference is more that online ads are way more trashy and distracting and terrible for privacy so there’s more reason for pushback.
It’s the problem with news websites/magazines/paper. They live because there are ads in it.
And so would they criticize companies that put a lot of cash on them ? Perhaps. May be not.
In France, we have a news website [0] which is totally independent, and only accessible for paying subscribers. It took them a few years and now they are earning money.
You might or might not agree with their editorial line, but the fact is that they can investigate any company without hesitation.
It’s hard, but I think it’s the only way to have an independent information.
That's a car review, not an advertisement. If you actually read it, they don't even like it much.
>Meh.
All-in-all, the Lexus NX 300h is an uninspiring car. If you like hybrids and want to drive one with a luxury badge, the NX 300h is worth looking at. I would have liked the option to suck the battery dry before the internal combustion engine kicks in (à la the plug-in Chrysler Pacifica hybrid). Instead, EV Mode in the NX 300h is limited to low speeds.
It's still sad that those companies can't offer the most basic, ethical option - providing value in exchange for money. No, the choice is only between getting crap shoved at you for free, and getting the same amount of crap for money.
This type of thing is the thumbprint of management by sociopathy. "Why does nobody subscribe to us and leave us so ad dependent!" They cry. Just like complaints about lack of employee loyalty after they do stuff like layoffs to inflate quarterly earnings and look at pension funds as piggy banks and refuse to give raises. Then complain about people leaving for career advancement when they won't even give Cost of Living raises. The same pattern regardless - do something for short term gain that creates a long term problem and try to pass the buck. And it wasn't their fault because they were entitled to the short term gains. They are incapable of understanding why trying to get paid twice for the same thing is a bad thing or why you should never trust anyone who attempts that. To them trust is something they are entitled by position to regardless of how they mistreat people.
In my opinion the best thing to do with them in response is banish them. Don't invest in them or patronize them as much as possible as they are clearly out to screw you over. If you are in management of a position to do so oust them as soon as possible. Sadly they are a goddamn plague and hard to oust.
We have a systemic problem though. This kind of sociopathy is pretty much legitimized, and being specialized in it is treated as respectable occupation.
Because not showing you ads would be "leaving money on the table" and that just won't do.
If not showing ads wasn't part of the deal, ads will be shown. If not harvesting your personal data wasn't part of the deal, personal data will be harvested.
To everyone making the obvious point: yes, obviously, there is potentially money to be made from this richer demographic. But that doesn't explain why they have to make the ads so intrusive or site-breaking.
Remember, something stops Ferrari from blanketing the dash with ads. Why doesn't that same dynamic apply here?
I want to know, how much does it truly cost for the same content without ads. What would the actual pricetag be, if we built in the overhead added by advertising and marketing into the fee for the product or service itself?
The content itself doesn't cont much but that isn't what people are after. Most of the budget goes towards branding to build trust in the content. That is what you are really paying for - the feeling that your sources are credible.
191 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 61.5 ms ] threadIt is also quite disrespectful considering the tracking etc. that comes with it. How many more subscribers would they get if they didn't treat them as garbage?
https://lwn.net/subscribe/
Revenue = subscriber revenue + ad revenue from ads shown to subscribers + ad revenue from ads shown to non-subscribers
The suggestions was to eliminate the middle piece and increase the subscription price to make up for it in the first piece. That's still leaves the last piece.
The above article also states that digital advertising revenue only accounted for 37 percent of total advertising revenue. So that means digital advertising revenue is at most 12% of total revenue. Furthermore, it is unstated how much of digital advertising revenue comes from paid subscribers vs unpaid visitors.
If we assumed, for the sake of argument, that half of digital advertising revenue was from paid and half unpaid, then cutting ads for paid subscribers would be doable with only about a 10% increase in price.
What’s more likely is that the subscription price does in fact cover costs and that advertising revenue is seen as a nice benefit on top that can be grown creatively without any accountability or backlash.
There are a lot of counter examples to this. Hulu, Spotify, Ars Technica, YouTube Premium, etc... People are willing and able to pay for ad-free content.
The author thought he was doing exactly this and, consequently, will cease to be a paying subscriber for much longer.
The ads and difficulty in unsubscribing are the reasons why these organisations will never achieve a critical mass of paid subscriptions.
This is based on other posts in this thread that talk about a $84/year subscription and $4-$15/year ad revenue. Since that was a reference to Facebook revenue, I imagine it would be a decent upper bound.
It reminds me of how people say that it's impossible to provide fresh produce without paying people below minimum wage. In lieu of common sense, it depends on numbers, which don't need to be precise, but you can't just handwave.
I'm inclined to believe the true story is simply, as others state, that no matter what the ad revenue is, it's X% more and nobody wants to give it up if they don't have to.
The problem is that web ads are nothing like that. They are orders of magnitude more scummy, can’t be vetted in advance and stalk the shit out of you in order to serve you “better” ads next time, whatever the hell “better” means in advertiser’s perverted minds.
Why is it acceptable on the web?
Yes. And on a recent trip to India, it got even worse. SpiceJet (domestic airlines) has ads on the back of the headrest of EVERY SEAT.
Physical paper printed Ads!
So you are staring at it for the entirety of your trip. I kid you not.
You can skip the ads. Just scrub ahead.
Good thing you get to rate at the end of the trip, which would (hopefully) put a stop to that.
I know for a fact, this is all coming and has already started, and is going to get even more invasive.
It's not Orwell's imagination anymore, it's reality. Only privacy law can stop it, maybe.
Disappointing is that this is the more likely outcome, rather than easing the sensory overload, stress, and discomfort.
It’s an interesting balance but it always reminds me that flying through the sky in a tin can is not entirely natural.
Of course, some of the security measures are for your comfort and safety as well. It’s just where the line is between for your good and for theirs that is tough to identify.
Spirit actually sells ads on everything it seems, even on the exterior of the plane: https://skift.com/2014/03/11/spirit-airlines-brings-advertis...
They do, however, upsell you in person by making some hate-my-job contracted flight attendants go through the cabin no less than three times trying to sell various things to you.
There are some in the on board magazines I suppose, I don't read them though, why would I?
I assume this is an advert. There aren't any in business or first.
https://i.postimg.cc/X7XpF2Th/IMG-2244.jpg
...and that's what I usually do when I fly --- sleep. I've found it to be the best way to make the time pass quickly.
Welcome to the world. Half the users of this site are actively perpetuating the corporate dystopia we inhabit.
Block their ads on the web ? you still have them on billboards if they’re local. They’ll mass DM whole regions if it makes economical sense. Your Netflix drama series will start mentionning them in passing. They’ll make ‘news’ pieces with a product CEO saving a baby chimpanzee that was not endangered in the first place.
You know they’ll find a way to your eyeballs by whatever mean, as long as it makes any sense to them.
I guess what you are responding to with outrage, I am responding to with a shrug.
It also matters if there is any actual competition that does tings better. Cable TV is having a bad time, in large part it is because of ads, but it is only happening because of the streaming services.
Airlines are a competitive service, but newspapers are not.
What's more annoying is adverts are a mere 7% of income, yet make it unwatchable.
So lucky in the UK.
I mean, advertising is about information sharing in a way. Can it be more efficient without clobbering art and media?
If I think about "information sharing", I'd imagine that the information is the thing of value to be shared and the goal is to enable the recipient to perform their own decisions with and increased base of background information.
However, ads work the other way around: You start with certainly outcomes that you would potential customers arrive at in their decisions and then think which information you can deliver to them to reach that outcome.
I know I'm way off in the weeds here, just brainstorming.
So maybe something like independently ran price comparison sites would work?
That's it. The ad just informed consumers about existence of a particular company and product, made it clear what the product is for, and listed its important qualities (especially differentiating from other similar products).
That's what you do when you actually care to inform, and not manipulate, customers. Since pretty much no ads are like this, I call bullshit when someone says advertising is important because it informs people.
Your point really doesn't add much to a conversation, since its premise is faulty. We accept such advertising on the web because we accept it in virtually every aspect of our lives.
Not to the same extent. That’s the point, and it’s an interesting question why this happens. What economic factors account for the differences in advertising between these two markets? It’s not “shallow” as your own shallow dismissal alleges.
> Your point really doesn't add much to a conversation, since its premise is faulty.
People who live in glass houses should not throw stones.
Also I think Enzo Ferrari would argue that the F1 cars and team are the real Ferrari porduct. The road cars are just ads and merchandise for the race team. =P
TBF, the Ferrari IS the ad - for Ferrari and whatever aggregate-lifestyle-image you are promoting.
"Hey everyone, look at how I have succeeded to the point where I can drive car [X]"
Not that there is anything wrong with that, though.
For example - I like to wear the same hiker-couture gear everyday to feel comfortable, functional and good about myself appearance. I am an advertisement for my thinking and decision making capability.
It's acceptable because it's the only thing they offer.
One explanation I heard is that companies give them for free, so most people are happy to take them and don't bother with removing the ad.
After this point, customers don't have much reason to remove the plate or frame unless they really hate the ad, happen to be self-installing a rearview camera or are selling the car.
For free products online that have an ad model, it's the VC complex perpetuating that model heavily - where the money is available initially and to scale quickly (because it's an easy calculation). The mantra isn't just "Move fast and break things" but also seems to be "if I don't do it - someone else will get there first" as part of the desire to be first-to-market (by any means) as a means to reach/capture a few of the main defense mechanisms of economies of scale and network effects; you don't need defense mechanisms if you have a good product however, and have a reasonable cost structure - it sure will be more profitable in the short-term though, not sustainable however. Facebook, Cambridge Analytica et al, perhaps needed to happen to wake people up to understand the importance of accountability and of community, moderation, and such.
Why are you so certain that Ferrari doesn't remarket their buyers?
Not a Ferrari, but my mother got a discount on her Toyota Yaris by letting the car dealer put a decal ad on it for 1 or 2 years. (Back in 2002 or so.)
Eventually, you'll get sick, and die.
If you wanted an ad-free subscription, it would cost substantially more than you currently pay to made up for the lost advertising revenue.
But people have proven they are mostly OK with ads, they don't mind them (since so many services online are fueled by them and people use them).
Let's remember that people generally have zero choice in the matter.
Well, that's what I mean. You often can't get the service without ads, as competitors show the same amount of ads.
Hell, these days you can't do anything, be it on-line or in meatspace, without being exposed to a steady stream of ads. There is no choice for ad-free life, unless you take the word "choice" so literally you accept moving to some remote location and living off land as a viable option for regular people.
Back in the 90s my dad used to buy shit from mail order catalogs. The volume and variety of catalogs he got in return was obscene. Seemingly every day he'd get a new catalog for something.
Edit: typo
Wait until the author learns about clearing cookies.
Paper newspapers always had ads too. Subscribers didn't get a different version of the paper without the ads. Ads have been a deeply ingrained part of the news business for over 100 years and they aren't going to stop now.
Prime example: Cable tv
https://www.nytimes.com/1981/07/26/arts/will-cable-tv-be-inv...
And so would they criticize companies that put a lot of cash on them ? Perhaps. May be not.
In France, we have a news website [0] which is totally independent, and only accessible for paying subscribers. It took them a few years and now they are earning money.
You might or might not agree with their editorial line, but the fact is that they can investigate any company without hesitation.
It’s hard, but I think it’s the only way to have an independent information.
[0] https://www.mediapart.fr
Eg. https://twitter.com/arstechnica/status/1051475468199833600
>Meh. All-in-all, the Lexus NX 300h is an uninspiring car. If you like hybrids and want to drive one with a luxury badge, the NX 300h is worth looking at. I would have liked the option to suck the battery dry before the internal combustion engine kicks in (à la the plug-in Chrysler Pacifica hybrid). Instead, EV Mode in the NX 300h is limited to low speeds.
Sgt_Apone beat me to it.
In my opinion the best thing to do with them in response is banish them. Don't invest in them or patronize them as much as possible as they are clearly out to screw you over. If you are in management of a position to do so oust them as soon as possible. Sadly they are a goddamn plague and hard to oust.
If not showing ads wasn't part of the deal, ads will be shown. If not harvesting your personal data wasn't part of the deal, personal data will be harvested.
That you paid money is irrelevant.
Remember, something stops Ferrari from blanketing the dash with ads. Why doesn't that same dynamic apply here?
The same subscription with out adverts would be £35 a month, basically the same price.