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The obvious answer is "don't." I just looked, and I've spent $250 on mobile apps this year. They are all mobile applications that do useful things for me, be it
by eropple 3y ago
The obvious answer is "don't." I just looked, and I've spent $250 on mobile apps this year. They are all mobile applications that do useful things for me, be it improvements to HomeKit or media creation tools--Affinity has me for like $150 by themselves this year!
If your mobile apps don't make money without invasive ad targeting, that's OK: others clearly can (see the sibling commenter), and we can get by with fewer mobile apps that don't when they are are presenting so thin a value proposition as to be unable to get users to pay for them through conventional means.
The "hard men / strong times" line in your profile (which, to be candid, is a pretty gross pretext for a lot of bad-actor politics, but you picked it not me) echoes deep here: there are plenty of endeavors that sell something people want enough to pay actual money for them, and you can always do that instead. I haven't worked for an ad-supported tech business since my first job out of college in 2010, and most of their business was actually in air travel and hotel bookings, the ads were tertiary. The jobs and the products exist.
Let's unleash the hot take cannon for a second: users basically don't need apps. Businesses do--and there's a ton of money in LOB mobile apps even--but almost every B2C mobile application I can think of is some form of luxury good. Making the case for a luxury good is harder than making one for one of self-evident value. Congratulations--you picked hard mode, and nobody is obligated to make it easier.
Optimize for making value to people who will pay for it, not virality or shareability, and perhaps you have a path to not needing to play with edgy patterns.
- asow92 3y agoYou aren't the average user. Most users can't even afford decent housing or food. Let alone $250/year for apps, and they will never pay. I'm sorry, but I think we just have fundamental disagreements about what software is.
- eropple 3y agoWe do disagree. But one of us is describing, and one of us is depending, and that skews things a little, doesn't it? Upton Sinclair had a line about this. What value, in a sane system, does selling advertising that targets people who "can't even afford decent housing or food" actually do? How are the goods you are selling--human attention--actually turning into revenue for the advertiser if the user has no money to act on the advertising? Or is it just one more iteration on a mutual deception that exists to create a predicate for "any of these mobile apps are worth creating in the first place"? You're building a bigger house of cards with every post.
- asow92 3y agoPoor people might be better served with targeted ads to help them find lower cost goods to save money, access helpful services they otherwise wouldn't know about, and seek out support groups/clubs/organizations. Not everything in this life is evil ya know.
- mynameisvlad 3y agoThey might but we both know they won’t be. They’ll be targeted with ads which exploit the fact that they are in an extremely vulnerable state. In fact, the more desperate, the more willing they’d be to click on an ad, which gives a perverse incentive to advertisers and developers to worsen their financial position. But please, show me examples of these good targeted ads because while in theory they could exist, something tells me they very much don’t.
- asow92 3y ago> we both know they won’t be. Not true, you don't speak for what I know. > show me examples of these good targeted ads because while in theory they could exist, something tells me they very much don’t. The non-profits in my area (which is very low income) would very much like to target my local community better/cheaper.
- mynameisvlad 3y ago> Not true, you don't speak for what I know. Just because you refuse to say it publicly does not mean you don't know it. > The non-profits in my area (which is very low income) would very much like to target my local community better/cheaper. They certainly would, but have they? I asked for a very simple and specific thing. Examples of targeted ads right now that are specifically targeted towards low-income folks and which are doing it to better their lives. Please, by all means, show me examples. Not anecdotes. Not opinion. Hard examples. Until then, it's a pipe dream used to justify your company's desire to further invade people's privacy.
- SoftTalker 3y agoYeah I could easily afford that but I haven't spent $250 on phone apps in my entire life. I don't think I've even spent $25. $250 is more like what I'd pay for the phone itself.
- eropple 3y agoTotally, but what do you do with mobile devices that needs it? I use iOS with iPads and iPhones, so buying Affinity (which works great on an iPad with a Pencil but also has software for quick edits on a phone) makes a lot of sense to me. They provide value, so I paid for them. This, not simply "doesn't have money", is the thing about mobile apps that it feels like most people in that most things a user wants to do on a phone don't actually need an app, and if they do it's probably because they're buying something or talking to somebody and neither of those are categories that need more entries with a lower security barrier.
- scarface_74 3y agoPlease, iPhone users are paying on average $1000+ for their phone. The median iPhone user in the US is making $53K a year (https://www.marketingdive.com/news/survey-iphone-owners-spend-more-have-higher-incomes-than-android-users/541008/ https://www.marketingdive.com/news/survey-iphone-owners-spen...). And most people in the US are neither starving or homeless.
- asow92 3y agoYour point is well taken, although I have a hard time grokking how'd I'd fair on that amount of income.
- scarface_74 3y agoYet the median income in the US is a little less than $40K and the median household income is $67K.
- asow92 3y agoIndeed, they aren't doing well.
- scarface_74 3y agoThe average American is not going homeless or hungry.
- ProfessorLayton 3y agoKind of wild that some people are spending ~1.8% of their income on a phone (Even higher if we consider post-tax income).
- scarface_74 3y agoAs much time people spend in their phone and utility that people get out of their phone, why is that crazy?
- bdavbdav 3y agoYou’re gonna need a source on “most users” to fly that one. “Sensor Tower data reveals that U.S. iPhone users spent an average of $138 on apps in 2020, up 38% from 2019.”