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> Walgreens risks angering them by solving a problem that shoppers didn't know existed. The company wants to engage more people with advertising (...) Contrary

by II2II 5y ago

> Walgreens risks angering them by solving a problem that shoppers didn't know existed. The company wants to engage more people with advertising (...) Contrary to a lot of claims, they are trying to solve a problem. The problem is the problem is of no interest to customers and actually creates problems for customers. I also wonder how long it will be a benefit for businesses. It is difficult to see how the advertising space can maintain its value if this is rolled out everywhere. It is difficult to see how the advertising space can maintain value once the novelty wears off and consumers largely ignore it. It is difficult to see how stores will manage the expectations and frustrations of consumers.

dhosek 5y ago
Back in the 90s during the dotcom bubble, there was a startup that planned to do things like give people free eggs with ads printed on them. I never got any free eggs and I remember thinking if you give everything away by making money on the ads, what the heck are the ads supposed to be selling? Even without the eggs, that still seems to be a problem with a lot of the internet economy—a lot of ads seem to be directed towards getting people to visit another site here they get—more ads.
- hakfoo 5y ago
  I don't think new value is created. What's happening is that value that used to be kept in-house is being absorbed by the AdTech middleman ecosystem. The classic example: When the local supermarket ran an ad in the daily printed newspaper, the publisher kept basically 100% of the ad spend (minus the marginal costs for newsprint, ink, and the labour to deal with the ad copy. Now they submit an ad to some network which generously kicks some percentage of that revenue back to localnewspaper.com. In this case, I'd expect that some of the money being thrown at Cooler Screens is coming from other ad spend verticals-- maybe a few less TV ads or one less page in the weekly newspaper circular. If Walgreens built their own screens it would still be a stupid idea, but it would probably be more cost-effective than paying someone else who owns the technology and is probably mostly interested in making a pitch to go public some day.

by II2II 5y ago

dhosek 5y ago

Back in the 90s during the dotcom bubble, there was a startup that planned to do things like give people free eggs with ads printed on them. I never got any free eggs and I remember thinking if you give everything away by making money on the ads, what the heck are the ads supposed to be selling? Even without the eggs, that still seems to be a problem with a lot of the internet economy—a lot of ads seem to be directed towards getting people to visit another site here they get—more ads.

hakfoo 5y ago
I don't think new value is created. What's happening is that value that used to be kept in-house is being absorbed by the AdTech middleman ecosystem. The classic example: When the local supermarket ran an ad in the daily printed newspaper, the publisher kept basically 100% of the ad spend (minus the marginal costs for newsprint, ink, and the labour to deal with the ad copy. Now they submit an ad to some network which generously kicks some percentage of that revenue back to localnewspaper.com. In this case, I'd expect that some of the money being thrown at Cooler Screens is coming from other ad spend verticals-- maybe a few less TV ads or one less page in the weekly newspaper circular. If Walgreens built their own screens it would still be a stupid idea, but it would probably be more cost-effective than paying someone else who owns the technology and is probably mostly interested in making a pitch to go public some day.