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One of the biggest perceived problems with this business model is that the sort of person who would be willing to pay to remove adverts is the sort of person ad

by corin_ 11y ago

One of the biggest perceived problems with this business model is that the sort of person who would be willing to pay to remove adverts is the sort of person advertisers most want to reach, since the people who won't pay for a better experience are also less likely to either be able to or to want to spend money on whatever is being advertised. I don't know if any data supports that, but many people in the advertising industry have that opinion. As such... I don't know about the numbers, I know very little about mobile advertising in general, and while I am a Guardian reader I don't use their mobile app - but my vague overall opinion is that it wouldn't surprise me if they priced it higher to compensate for losing a higher quality segment of their ad-viewing audience.

vlehto 11y ago
>sort of person who would be willing to pay to remove adverts is the sort of person advertisers most want to reach People who wish to buy shit also exist. Some of them might actually want info about their options. Then there are people who are not annoyed by commercials and who are easily manipulated to buy almost whatever. They ruin the adds for the rest of us. They are probably poor, because advertisers already got all their money. Personally I would love someone to advertice books to me. I've even subscribed to goodreads for that, but their recommendations suck big time. (Though it's still good for bookmarking what I want to read and reading reviews.)
- corin_ 11y ago
  Certainly there wouldn't be a 100% match between "would be worth advertising to" and "would pay to remove adverts", but the problem is nobody (afaik) has any data on to what extent it might correlate, and so are scared by it. I wonder if companies like the Guardian have thought about trying to compare between the two audiences, i.e. how people who now subscribe interacted with adverts before subscring vs. audience that doesn't pay. Thinking of some of the tracking tools that could be used... it wouldn't be impossible (though wouldn't be imperfect data either), but it would be a rather complicated thing to set-up so it wouldn't surprise me if they don't have it in place.
  - vlehto 11y ago
    Yes, your point still stands. Further problem is that most people would probably prefer adds, but only in very narrow subset of all products. And they might not want to share that subset, not with modern privacy concerns and rogue advertisers. So you would have almost infinite amount of groups and no way to find them.
- jon-wood 11y ago
  > People who wish to buy shit also exist. Some of them might actually want info about their options. Sure, I'm sometimes one of them, but that doesn't mean I want information about my options mixed into the middle of a news article. If I'm in the mood to buy something I'll go to shopping and review sites to find information about it.
- coldpie 11y ago
  Buddy, if you're making purchasing decisions based on advertisements, you're in for a world of hurt.
  - vlehto 11y ago
    If solely on advertisements, then you're correct. But if you get some kind of intuition of normal price range of bicycles, then notice add of cheap bicycle, what's the problem? Originally adds we're about providing information that was beneficial to everybody. Now that is not true and the signal/noise ratio is terrible. But still adds could become usefull again if targeted enough. But targeting adds can be world hurt too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_order#/media/File:Sears_-_Aids_That_Every_Woman_Appreciates.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_order#/media/File:Sears_-... Imagine the effect of that in a small village with no competition?
venomsnake 11y ago
I think that discount codes will come big time instead of ads. You buy subscription from Guardian and you get some promo codes for something. The add guys still pay to reach you, have perfect measure on effects, and you can just ignore the whole thing if you are not interested. Almost like simpler Massdrop (whose emails I mostly ignore but check from time to time)

by corin_ 11y ago

vlehto 11y ago

>sort of person who would be willing to pay to remove adverts is the sort of person advertisers most want to reach People who wish to buy shit also exist. Some of them might actually want info about their options. Then there are people who are not annoyed by commercials and who are easily manipulated to buy almost whatever. They ruin the adds for the rest of us. They are probably poor, because advertisers already got all their money. Personally I would love someone to advertice books to me. I've even subscribed to goodreads for that, but their recommendations suck big time. (Though it's still good for bookmarking what I want to read and reading reviews.)

corin_ 11y ago
Certainly there wouldn't be a 100% match between "would be worth advertising to" and "would pay to remove adverts", but the problem is nobody (afaik) has any data on to what extent it might correlate, and so are scared by it. I wonder if companies like the Guardian have thought about trying to compare between the two audiences, i.e. how people who now subscribe interacted with adverts before subscring vs. audience that doesn't pay. Thinking of some of the tracking tools that could be used... it wouldn't be impossible (though wouldn't be imperfect data either), but it would be a rather complicated thing to set-up so it wouldn't surprise me if they don't have it in place.
- vlehto 11y ago
  Yes, your point still stands. Further problem is that most people would probably prefer adds, but only in very narrow subset of all products. And they might not want to share that subset, not with modern privacy concerns and rogue advertisers. So you would have almost infinite amount of groups and no way to find them.
jon-wood 11y ago
> People who wish to buy shit also exist. Some of them might actually want info about their options. Sure, I'm sometimes one of them, but that doesn't mean I want information about my options mixed into the middle of a news article. If I'm in the mood to buy something I'll go to shopping and review sites to find information about it.
coldpie 11y ago
Buddy, if you're making purchasing decisions based on advertisements, you're in for a world of hurt.
- vlehto 11y ago
  If solely on advertisements, then you're correct. But if you get some kind of intuition of normal price range of bicycles, then notice add of cheap bicycle, what's the problem? Originally adds we're about providing information that was beneficial to everybody. Now that is not true and the signal/noise ratio is terrible. But still adds could become usefull again if targeted enough. But targeting adds can be world hurt too. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_order#/media/File:Sears_-_Aids_That_Every_Woman_Appreciates.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_order#/media/File:Sears_-... Imagine the effect of that in a small village with no competition?

venomsnake 11y ago

I think that discount codes will come big time instead of ads. You buy subscription from Guardian and you get some promo codes for something. The add guys still pay to reach you, have perfect measure on effects, and you can just ignore the whole thing if you are not interested. Almost like simpler Massdrop (whose emails I mostly ignore but check from time to time)