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By the same logic, it's irresponsible to watch ads and not buy the products. That's after all what keeps the wheels turning. I remember I had this discussion a

By the same logic, it's irresponsible to watch ads and not buy the products. That's after all what keeps the wheels turning. I remember I had this discussion after a school political debate in the 90s, with (adult) actual politicians. Textbooks at the time were not publicly funded, and naturally the textbook companies jacked up prices for their captive audience forced to buy their books. This one party had the "brilliant" idea of ad-funded textbooks. I asked, if the textbook companies currently take $50 for the book, if it was instead funded by say McDonalds ads, how many extra burgers would each student have to buy that year? They didn't have any good answer to that.

sneak 3y ago
None. The textbooks would then be subsidized by McDonalds' advertising budget, reducing their profit margin. It's the same as blocking YouTube ads; Google still pays the creator as if you had watched the ads, so your video playback is being subsidized by Google's ad business profits. When you choose not to block ads, you aren't "supporting creators", you are supporting Google shareholders.
- vintermann 3y ago
  Point is, McDonald's wouldn't do that for long. They don't have that big margins. Google's shareholders might, for a while, for the sake of "control". But either way, it's not sustainable. The anti-adblockers are right about that part. They're just wrong that watching ads without spending a ton of money on the products help matters.
riidom 3y ago
This happened for real, actually, at least some german science fiction publishing houses did that. They would "insert" a page into the book, which picks up the story in some really cheesy way and then bends in within two sentences towards the main character needing a quick soup now (the advertise was for soup always, they just had that one sponsor apparently). See here (picture gallery): https://johannes.freudendahl.net/2019/01/werbung-in-romanen/ https://johannes.freudendahl.net/2019/01/werbung-in-romanen/ The introduction goes like: "Only Kirk kept helping himself, because he was convinced he would need strength for the upcoming events." and then below the black bars the actual ad: "The reader should do same bla e.g. soup bla takes just 5 minutes etc" Just some anecdote.

sneak 3y ago

None. The textbooks would then be subsidized by McDonalds' advertising budget, reducing their profit margin. It's the same as blocking YouTube ads; Google still pays the creator as if you had watched the ads, so your video playback is being subsidized by Google's ad business profits. When you choose not to block ads, you aren't "supporting creators", you are supporting Google shareholders.

vintermann 3y ago
Point is, McDonald's wouldn't do that for long. They don't have that big margins. Google's shareholders might, for a while, for the sake of "control". But either way, it's not sustainable. The anti-adblockers are right about that part. They're just wrong that watching ads without spending a ton of money on the products help matters.

riidom 3y ago

This happened for real, actually, at least some german science fiction publishing houses did that. They would "insert" a page into the book, which picks up the story in some really cheesy way and then bends in within two sentences towards the main character needing a quick soup now (the advertise was for soup always, they just had that one sponsor apparently). See here (picture gallery): https://johannes.freudendahl.net/2019/01/werbung-in-romanen/ https://johannes.freudendahl.net/2019/01/werbung-in-romanen/ The introduction goes like: "Only Kirk kept helping himself, because he was convinced he would need strength for the upcoming events." and then below the black bars the actual ad: "The reader should do same bla e.g. soup bla takes just 5 minutes etc" Just some anecdote.