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Everything isn't paid for by ads. There are many other revenue models for businesses outside of ads. And ads are not the driver of the desire for businesses to

Everything isn't paid for by ads. There are many other revenue models for businesses outside of ads. And ads are not the driver of the desire for businesses to become more operationally efficient (via measuring more things). That drive exists independent of ads.

BobbyJo 5y ago
The vast majority of services used on the internet by everyday people are paid for by ads. If you measure where people spend their time online, it is on average almost entirely within products supported by ads.
- FFRefresh 5y ago
  Likely to be the case within the scope of “consumer sites/apps used most frequently by users”. But I don’t think that encapsulates all the technology of ‘this era’, as the OP referenced. I don’t think it even encapsulates all of the supporting infrastructure that the consumer sites/apps lean on to provide their services.
  - BobbyJo 5y ago
    The context was how technology is invading people's lives via always being connected. This is clearly pointing at consumer tech, which is almost universally ad supported. Additionally, if these ad supported services use paid-for services, they are paying for them with ad revenue, making them effectively ad supported themselves.
    - FFRefresh 5y ago
      I'm assuming we don't have any factual disagreements here, it seems like there is just context ambiguity and we're talking past each other. For instance, when you say 'consumer tech', I don't only think of social media, internet search, and media/content sites. It is true that people spend a lot of time on those sites, and many of them rely on advertising revenue to support themselves (sometimes exclusively, sometimes partially). When I think of consumer tech, I think of it more broadly[1], and the larger stack. One example part of that stack is hardware and physical devices, which are required for anyone to even access such sites. We wouldn't 'always be connected' if not for advances in mobile/hardware. To touch on the slippery concept of 'if ad-supported services use paid-for services, they are effectively ad-supported then': this is a weird take and word game to play. Why stop there? Where does the ad revenue come from? Advertisers. Where do the advertisers money come from to pay for ads? Mostly not ads themselves, but from a host of different revenue models. So using this logic, ad-supported services are effectively a bunch of different revenue models? (so could one then hand-wave away the ad revenue model altogether?) [1]" https://builtin.com/consumer-tech https://builtin.com/consumer-tech

BobbyJo 5y ago

The vast majority of services used on the internet by everyday people are paid for by ads. If you measure where people spend their time online, it is on average almost entirely within products supported by ads.

FFRefresh 5y ago
Likely to be the case within the scope of “consumer sites/apps used most frequently by users”. But I don’t think that encapsulates all the technology of ‘this era’, as the OP referenced. I don’t think it even encapsulates all of the supporting infrastructure that the consumer sites/apps lean on to provide their services.
- BobbyJo 5y ago
  The context was how technology is invading people's lives via always being connected. This is clearly pointing at consumer tech, which is almost universally ad supported. Additionally, if these ad supported services use paid-for services, they are paying for them with ad revenue, making them effectively ad supported themselves.
  - FFRefresh 5y ago
    I'm assuming we don't have any factual disagreements here, it seems like there is just context ambiguity and we're talking past each other. For instance, when you say 'consumer tech', I don't only think of social media, internet search, and media/content sites. It is true that people spend a lot of time on those sites, and many of them rely on advertising revenue to support themselves (sometimes exclusively, sometimes partially). When I think of consumer tech, I think of it more broadly[1], and the larger stack. One example part of that stack is hardware and physical devices, which are required for anyone to even access such sites. We wouldn't 'always be connected' if not for advances in mobile/hardware. To touch on the slippery concept of 'if ad-supported services use paid-for services, they are effectively ad-supported then': this is a weird take and word game to play. Why stop there? Where does the ad revenue come from? Advertisers. Where do the advertisers money come from to pay for ads? Mostly not ads themselves, but from a host of different revenue models. So using this logic, ad-supported services are effectively a bunch of different revenue models? (so could one then hand-wave away the ad revenue model altogether?) [1]" https://builtin.com/consumer-tech https://builtin.com/consumer-tech