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> Advertisers aren't altruistic and don't voluntarily subsidise poor people's access; advertisers want to target people with money. Yes and no, since at the sa
by rpastuszak 4y ago
> Advertisers aren't altruistic and don't voluntarily subsidise poor people's access; advertisers want to target people with money.
Yes and no, since at the same time _almost everyone can be monetised_, just at a lower CPM. Everyone, almost everyone has _some_ money they could spend on useless crap. The goal of advertising is not to inform (or "connect people with the brands they love") but to create a need. This is not much different from poor people spending money on lotteries or in-app purchases in shitty mobile games.
- Nextgrid 4y ago> just at a lower CPM Yes, but if you can accurately predict the CPM ahead of time (without hurting conversion rates for high-CPM users), you could deny service to those users whose CPM wouldn't cover costs or required profit margins. Of course, in reality the marginal cost of serving any given user is near-zero so ad-supported services are happy to serve just about anyone. That's why they'd survive just as well in an ad-less world as long as some minority of users is willing to pay.