4 ms·

Why doesn't (or does?) this apply to youtube, spotify, or other similar services?

• filoleg 5y ago
  My guess is because for those services you listed, ads explicitly stop the experience and make you watch ads to continue to be able to use the service normally. If I watch a Youtube video and it gets interrupted by an ad, I am stuck until it is over and cannot consume my content. Same with Spotify. So understandably, people would be willing to pay for the premium tier. I, myself, pay for premium on those services to not deal with ads, as they steal my time and interrupt my normal usage of those services. With FB, ads aren't interrupting the experience. They are just there, but you are welcome to completely ignore them and proceed consuming your content. I wouldn't pay premium to get rid of FB ads, even if it was just $1/mo. Especially given that, more than once, I got genuinely useful ads that helped me with making a good purchasing decision (the final decision came down to me doing my independent research before buying, but the ads pointed me towards the type of stuff I was looking for). So I don't gain much by getting rid of FB ads (as they are non-interruptive), while potentially losing out on some stuff. I think the last bit I mentioned is kind of the key to FB strategy. They don't want to offer the "no-ads" premium tier, because they don't want to pose their ads as an annoyance you have to pay to get rid of, they want to pose them as a value add. Not trying to argue whether it is indeed a value add for users or not, just theorizing how FB product team sees it and tries to pose it. P.S. I don't work in ads or anything even tangentially related. And neither do I have a stake in FB or any other ad-related business. Just describing my genuine user experience.