3 ms·

In the real world, people hate advertising. This is why as an app developer I am deeply sceptical about Google's model. Okay, so the consumer saves a buck, bu

In the real world, people hate advertising. This is why as an app developer I am deeply sceptical about Google's model. Okay, so the consumer saves a buck, but then you chip away at their goodwill every time you show an ad. And note, when you're showing an ad, to make it effective you have to make it intrusive, you either have to lock them out of the free functionality for a while or you need to make it eye-catching. I don't know anyone that said "I'm so glad Google bought Youtube and plastered ads all over the videos". People hate advertising so much they will go out of their way to avoid it. In economic terms, as an app developer the way I see it is that free+ads is really just burning up my user's good will to enrich Google. The more I annoy my customers like this, the less likely they are to recommend my app. To the extent that it is less than a zero-sum game... it's not just an even 50:50 trade-off between for pay and ad-supported.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
p_nathan 16y ago
The right kind of advertising is pretty awesome, because it provides value for me. Right now, Stack Overflow and Amazon have the best ads out there, IMO. SO took a while to get decent ads too. I watched some stuff on Hulu the other day. Fancy cars, teeth whitening commercials, drugs I don't ever anticipate using, and other useless stuff to me was marketed at me. That's just not a good ad model I think. I would love to see some really new and interesting products - not Another Car|Soda|Beer commercial.
- kpozin 16y ago
  TechCrunch had a good guest article arguing that Hulu's poor targeting is intentional: http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/08/hulu-opec/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/08/hulu-opec/ Hulu has enough information on its users to target ads very narrowly, but since it's run by a conglomerate of media companies, it intentionally does not do this in order to avoid competing with traditional (untargeted but highly profitable) television advertising.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

p_nathan 16y ago

The right kind of advertising is pretty awesome, because it provides value for me. Right now, Stack Overflow and Amazon have the best ads out there, IMO. SO took a while to get decent ads too. I watched some stuff on Hulu the other day. Fancy cars, teeth whitening commercials, drugs I don't ever anticipate using, and other useless stuff to me was marketed at me. That's just not a good ad model I think. I would love to see some really new and interesting products - not Another Car|Soda|Beer commercial.

kpozin 16y ago
TechCrunch had a good guest article arguing that Hulu's poor targeting is intentional: http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/08/hulu-opec/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/08/hulu-opec/ Hulu has enough information on its users to target ads very narrowly, but since it's run by a conglomerate of media companies, it intentionally does not do this in order to avoid competing with traditional (untargeted but highly profitable) television advertising.