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WTF is up with Nord? I always felt that VPNs were a pretty niche tech tool, but I see those ads freaking everywhere. Are there that many people that use VPNs th

by rocmcd 4y ago

WTF is up with Nord? I always felt that VPNs were a pretty niche tech tool, but I see those ads freaking everywhere. Are there that many people that use VPNs that warrant the ad investment?

wswope 4y ago
It’s economics: much like with car insurance, the market is a zero-sum game because the quality providers all more or less have equivalent levels of service - thus advertising becomes the most effective way to capture revenue, because prospective buyers don’t generally have complete enough information to e.g. assess a firm’s “operational excellence” or technical qualities on their own.
- Theodores 4y ago
  That is a really good point. Furthermore, it is marginal cost for the content creating peoples. They just have to read the script and roll the supplied graphics. If they get $1 from total sales then it is worthwhile if you are only getting 2K views. Maybe these VPNs offer a minimum fee and then commission on top so that there is always a payday, albeit small. None of them seem to record bespoke content where they demo the VPN for real or show how it works. The message has pivoted to getting content from region locked services such as Netflix. With car insurance (the last time I was watching TV, some years ago) they had rather silly 'meerkats' with Russian stereotype characters selling the insurance, with the people collecting the fluffy toy versions of the 'meerkats'. If you renew your insurance every year you get another 'meerkat' and soon the goal is to collect the set. Often it is the company that pays the insurance but the employee gets the 'meerkat', maybe to post to eBay... My niece's inheritance is mostly 'meerkat' toys and a few empty beer bottles. I am holding out with OpenVPN on a VPS until cuddly toys get given out with VPNs and they are advertised in every YT show with AI generated cuddly toys with AI accents.
- NoboruWataya 4y ago
  I don't agree that it's zero sum - this is a niche market that, if it could reach a broader audience, would experience an influx of new customers. That could potentially benefit all the players in the market, though of course it would benefit the company driving the popularisation the most. Personally I think that in marketing like this NordVPN are not trying to convince existing VPN users that their service is better than their competitors'. Rather, they are trying to convince non-VPN users that they need a VPN.
  - Ekaros 4y ago
    VPN marketing seems to boil down to two things. Either scaring people about their ISPs and "hackers" trying to steal something. Or circumventing geo-ip blocks... Now later is valid, but somewhat questionable use. And first depends, but probably not needed unless they really want to use that unsecured airport wlan... So it is really convincing people they need it. For those reasons...
  - wswope 4y ago
    > this is a niche market that, if it could reach a broader audience, would experience an influx of new customers. Honestly curious: what makes you think that? I'm someone who really likes VPNs, but in all my experience, they have some really rough edges for non-technical people. I would never recommend one to my non-technical friends or family unless they had a very specific need for it. Using Nord as an example, since it's a popular option: - The client takes >90 seconds to load and connect on my Win10 Intel Atom craptop. - Apple often flags some Nord IPs (probably due to legitimate abuse/attacks coming from them) - leading to Apple Maps, Siri, and other services hanging indefinitely on iOS. - As of a year ago, the Nord CLI client was completely borking the networking on my stock Debian 10 install whenever I went idle for a few hours. (Didn't dig super deep, but the CLI client would go totally unresponsive and I couldn't get network going again by any other means apart from full reboot.) - Majority of banking/financial service websites block you. - You're much more likely to get flagged/run into issues when making payments or signing up for any sort of new account. - Many desktop apps don't gracefully handle the IP change when you connect to VPN. Some of this is Nord-specific, but my point is that people just looking to dip their toes in the water are going to run into some form of similar issue - and that makes VPNs not very user-friendly to the general public. That's why I think most of the people who'd want a VPN already know about them.
    - fomine3 4y ago
      Even if VPN services are like you said, still they want to sell more and it's possible by ads. Degradation could be justified for "privacy".
      - 4y ago

by rocmcd 4y ago

WTF is up with Nord? I always felt that VPNs were a pretty niche tech tool, but I see those ads freaking everywhere. Are there that many people that use VPNs that warrant the ad investment?

wswope 4y ago

It’s economics: much like with car insurance, the market is a zero-sum game because the quality providers all more or less have equivalent levels of service - thus advertising becomes the most effective way to capture revenue, because prospective buyers don’t generally have complete enough information to e.g. assess a firm’s “operational excellence” or technical qualities on their own.

Theodores 4y ago
That is a really good point. Furthermore, it is marginal cost for the content creating peoples. They just have to read the script and roll the supplied graphics. If they get $1 from total sales then it is worthwhile if you are only getting 2K views. Maybe these VPNs offer a minimum fee and then commission on top so that there is always a payday, albeit small. None of them seem to record bespoke content where they demo the VPN for real or show how it works. The message has pivoted to getting content from region locked services such as Netflix. With car insurance (the last time I was watching TV, some years ago) they had rather silly 'meerkats' with Russian stereotype characters selling the insurance, with the people collecting the fluffy toy versions of the 'meerkats'. If you renew your insurance every year you get another 'meerkat' and soon the goal is to collect the set. Often it is the company that pays the insurance but the employee gets the 'meerkat', maybe to post to eBay... My niece's inheritance is mostly 'meerkat' toys and a few empty beer bottles. I am holding out with OpenVPN on a VPS until cuddly toys get given out with VPNs and they are advertised in every YT show with AI generated cuddly toys with AI accents.
NoboruWataya 4y ago
I don't agree that it's zero sum - this is a niche market that, if it could reach a broader audience, would experience an influx of new customers. That could potentially benefit all the players in the market, though of course it would benefit the company driving the popularisation the most. Personally I think that in marketing like this NordVPN are not trying to convince existing VPN users that their service is better than their competitors'. Rather, they are trying to convince non-VPN users that they need a VPN.
- Ekaros 4y ago
  VPN marketing seems to boil down to two things. Either scaring people about their ISPs and "hackers" trying to steal something. Or circumventing geo-ip blocks... Now later is valid, but somewhat questionable use. And first depends, but probably not needed unless they really want to use that unsecured airport wlan... So it is really convincing people they need it. For those reasons...
- wswope 4y ago
  > this is a niche market that, if it could reach a broader audience, would experience an influx of new customers. Honestly curious: what makes you think that? I'm someone who really likes VPNs, but in all my experience, they have some really rough edges for non-technical people. I would never recommend one to my non-technical friends or family unless they had a very specific need for it. Using Nord as an example, since it's a popular option: - The client takes >90 seconds to load and connect on my Win10 Intel Atom craptop. - Apple often flags some Nord IPs (probably due to legitimate abuse/attacks coming from them) - leading to Apple Maps, Siri, and other services hanging indefinitely on iOS. - As of a year ago, the Nord CLI client was completely borking the networking on my stock Debian 10 install whenever I went idle for a few hours. (Didn't dig super deep, but the CLI client would go totally unresponsive and I couldn't get network going again by any other means apart from full reboot.) - Majority of banking/financial service websites block you. - You're much more likely to get flagged/run into issues when making payments or signing up for any sort of new account. - Many desktop apps don't gracefully handle the IP change when you connect to VPN. Some of this is Nord-specific, but my point is that people just looking to dip their toes in the water are going to run into some form of similar issue - and that makes VPNs not very user-friendly to the general public. That's why I think most of the people who'd want a VPN already know about them.
  - fomine3 4y ago
    Even if VPN services are like you said, still they want to sell more and it's possible by ads. Degradation could be justified for "privacy".
    - 4y ago