5 ms·

You make it sound like your users are getting a free service. They are not. They just do not pay you directly. Why are advertisers willing to pay you $15/month

You make it sound like your users are getting a free service. They are not. They just do not pay you directly. Why are advertisers willing to pay you $15/month per user? Because those users buy the advertisers' wares with a hefty "advertisement-tax" on top of the "real" price.

adblawk 11y ago
You're misunderstanding the example. Advertisers do not pay $15 per user, that's the amount we would need from 5% of our users to replace the revenue lost from no advertising. The example puts the value of each user per month at $1, which is what advertisers pay.
- chris_wot 11y ago
  So advertising is inefficient. News at 11! It would be far better for content creators to create valuable content and charge for it than to rely on the dubious ethics of most advertisers. For a time, I paid for a SMH online subscription, but then I discovered that a. Half my comments were still not reviewed or even published, with no explanation. I was STILL tracked by up to 60 ad trackers every time I went to their website. And the content of the Herald started to degrade more and more (no, I don't care about Kim Kardashian, and I never will. And it's not acceptable to have sentences that drop whole words, often in ways that make that sentence unreadable). So I stopped reading and paying for the content. Now if I could find a decent newspaper I could pay a reasonable subscription fee to, then I'd do so. To hell with advertising. If your business model is reliant on it to survive, then wither on the vine and die for all I care.
- manicdee 11y ago
  Are you assuming that the majority of your users don't consider your content to be worth $1/month?
  - jamiequint 11y ago
    Penny Gap: http://redeye.firstround.com/2007/03/the_first_penny.html http://redeye.firstround.com/2007/03/the_first_penny.html
ikurei 11y ago
Not that I agree with them, but their point seemed to be that their service is accesible to all, independently of their wealth. That close, but not the same as free.

adblawk 11y ago

You're misunderstanding the example. Advertisers do not pay $15 per user, that's the amount we would need from 5% of our users to replace the revenue lost from no advertising. The example puts the value of each user per month at $1, which is what advertisers pay.

chris_wot 11y ago
So advertising is inefficient. News at 11! It would be far better for content creators to create valuable content and charge for it than to rely on the dubious ethics of most advertisers. For a time, I paid for a SMH online subscription, but then I discovered that a. Half my comments were still not reviewed or even published, with no explanation. I was STILL tracked by up to 60 ad trackers every time I went to their website. And the content of the Herald started to degrade more and more (no, I don't care about Kim Kardashian, and I never will. And it's not acceptable to have sentences that drop whole words, often in ways that make that sentence unreadable). So I stopped reading and paying for the content. Now if I could find a decent newspaper I could pay a reasonable subscription fee to, then I'd do so. To hell with advertising. If your business model is reliant on it to survive, then wither on the vine and die for all I care.
manicdee 11y ago
Are you assuming that the majority of your users don't consider your content to be worth $1/month?
- jamiequint 11y ago
  Penny Gap: http://redeye.firstround.com/2007/03/the_first_penny.html http://redeye.firstround.com/2007/03/the_first_penny.html

ikurei 11y ago

Not that I agree with them, but their point seemed to be that their service is accesible to all, independently of their wealth. That close, but not the same as free.