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A lot of things are sold cheaper than they would be otherwise (including at a loss) because they can make part of the money through ads/add-ons instead. It's cu
by Tenoke 4y ago
A lot of things are sold cheaper than they would be otherwise (including at a loss) because they can make part of the money through ads/add-ons instead. It's customers who have shown they prefer those cheaper on the face of it options rather than those with much bigger up-front cost (which still exist but have been mostly left to business products since only there are enough of their customers fine with it).
- RajT88 4y agoYep, this I think is implicit in the author's frustration. He didn't buy the cheapest possible TV, he bought something near the top of the range. Premium customers deserve premium treatment. I would wager the story is the same for the absolute most expensive TV's as well. What I haven't seen here in this thread yet is the usual suggestion of looking into "Digital Signage" displays, which in addition to being "dumb", some of them come with a place to chunk in an RPI board!
- jakub_g 4y agoPremium customers are premium ad targets.
- marcosdumay 4y agoI doubt this. Even more because the cheaper products have less lucrative users, and are way less likely to include ads than the most expensive ones.
- titzer 4y ago> are sold cheaper than they would be otherwise They are absolutely not selling $3k TVs at a loss.
- tarakat 4y ago> It's customers who have shown they prefer those cheaper on the face of it options rather than those with much bigger up-front cost I question the "much" - I'm sure the price difference isn't as big as those who are spying on us would have us believe (and coincidentally they are also keeping their costs secret). But more importantly, how can you attribute this to "preference", when the hypothetical price difference is front and center, while the ads and spying are hidden, and there is not an equivalent TV without the ads and spying being sold next to the ad-infested one at an unsubsidized price?
- hakfoo 4y agoThis would be much more interesting if they had to quantify it. When Amazon sold the "ad-supported" Kindle, with a corresponding full-price unit, it made a pretty direct statement of the lifetime value they expected out of advertising. I suspect both consumers and investors would be fascinated to know how much value the manufacturer expects to get out of these post-sale bleeds. Would their investors be comfortable with a firm that's willing to compromise their brand equity on halo-tier products to extract an expected $35 lifetime ad revenue on a $3000 set?