29 ms·

How do so many other companies like this make money? For example, HQ: the live trivia game show app that gives away a few thousand dollars multiple times per

by jdlyga 9y ago

How do so many other companies like this make money? For example, HQ: the live trivia game show app that gives away a few thousand dollars multiple times per day. There's no ads, and no in app purchases. Besides burning through VC money like it's 1998, what's the business model?

sudhirj 9y ago
No ads doesn't mean your data isn't being used for ads. It's likely being sold to orthogonal adtech businesses. i.e. the company collecting the data is rarely the one using it, it usually just sells it.
- cwyers 9y ago
  And how well does that work out? My experience with ad targeting is that it's mostly awful. Amazon can track every book I purchase through them, and the ads for books to buy on my Kindle are awful. Facebook has oodles of information about me, and if I turn off AdBlock for a moment there, the ads I see are... diabetes test strips (I do not have diabetes) and something involving Brook Shields that I bet is a total sham. The only online ads I see where data on me, and not just inventory, seems to play a major role is retargeting, where I look at something on Amazon and it's shown to me again in an ad in case I changed my mind about not buying it. The whole adtech industry is in awful shape, and the idea that MoviePass can be profitable by being such a periphery part of the adtech industry is laughable. People will just tell Facebook and Twitter what movies they've seen for free, there's no reason to subsidize movie tickets to get that data. This is a case of "let's spend VC money like water to get enough customers to get a huge valuation and then figure out a business model."
  - supreme_sublime 9y ago
    I'm curious, does Amazon continue to recommend items you either just bought or are similar to something you recently bought? I get this all the time and it is annoying. It seems like the recommended stuff is related to my searches and doesn't get changed by my purchases. I think the whole online ad industry is broken. I don't know why people keep pouring money into it. Most people have learned to ignore ads, or they use an ad blocker. I don't care to see an ad for something I already bought. I doubt a system like this would actually work, but I'd explicitly tell them what kind of products I'm looking for if they asked. This passive "we can get into their mind through searches" doesn't work very well.
bruceb 9y ago
HQ gets 1m+ people to watch to same thing with 100% attention twice a day. They can cover that costs with ads easy. Will people keep tuning in? Maybe. But their burn is a lot less than movie pass.

by jdlyga 9y ago

sudhirj 9y ago

No ads doesn't mean your data isn't being used for ads. It's likely being sold to orthogonal adtech businesses. i.e. the company collecting the data is rarely the one using it, it usually just sells it.

cwyers 9y ago
And how well does that work out? My experience with ad targeting is that it's mostly awful. Amazon can track every book I purchase through them, and the ads for books to buy on my Kindle are awful. Facebook has oodles of information about me, and if I turn off AdBlock for a moment there, the ads I see are... diabetes test strips (I do not have diabetes) and something involving Brook Shields that I bet is a total sham. The only online ads I see where data on me, and not just inventory, seems to play a major role is retargeting, where I look at something on Amazon and it's shown to me again in an ad in case I changed my mind about not buying it. The whole adtech industry is in awful shape, and the idea that MoviePass can be profitable by being such a periphery part of the adtech industry is laughable. People will just tell Facebook and Twitter what movies they've seen for free, there's no reason to subsidize movie tickets to get that data. This is a case of "let's spend VC money like water to get enough customers to get a huge valuation and then figure out a business model."
- supreme_sublime 9y ago
  I'm curious, does Amazon continue to recommend items you either just bought or are similar to something you recently bought? I get this all the time and it is annoying. It seems like the recommended stuff is related to my searches and doesn't get changed by my purchases. I think the whole online ad industry is broken. I don't know why people keep pouring money into it. Most people have learned to ignore ads, or they use an ad blocker. I don't care to see an ad for something I already bought. I doubt a system like this would actually work, but I'd explicitly tell them what kind of products I'm looking for if they asked. This passive "we can get into their mind through searches" doesn't work very well.

bruceb 9y ago

HQ gets 1m+ people to watch to same thing with 100% attention twice a day. They can cover that costs with ads easy. Will people keep tuning in? Maybe. But their burn is a lot less than movie pass.