Ad-Blocking

It’s like there are two internets. One of skeptical consumers doing their best to navigate their lives and the other of scumbag providers doing their best to win through subterfuge. Then again, in a world where brands are revered and Volkswagen cheats why do we expect people to bend over backwards for businesses?

We can talk about ads slowing down mobile loading times, we can reference Apple making its money on hardware, but what we’ve really got is a public that’s sick and tired of getting the short end of the stick. If Republicans were advertisers they’d tell people to just pick themselves up by their bootstraps and be just like them, winners. But is it a winning economy when we’re inundated with messages that aren’t relevant that intrude upon our everyday life?

But websites will tell us there’s no free lunch.

Which brings up the question of payment. Everyone on the corporate side believes no one will pay. But the truth is we pay all the time, when you offer convenience and a desirable product. But when you do your best to put one over on us, we get angry. And if there’s any way we can get retribution…

Kind of like Napster. Sure, tunes were free. But they were also unlocked from overpriced albums with few good tracks. Furthermore, now radio was no longer in control, we were able to sample wares based on our own desires. The irony is the major labels and music business honchos will STILL tell you radio is in control! Ain’ that a laugh. Radio is where you can reach the most people easily, but it means less than ever before. How do we know? Because most of the public is clueless as to the Top Ten, they just don’t care about it. In other words, it turns out the music industry is not giving people what they want.

We’ve all got to focus on giving people what they want. That’s internet 101. The consumer is in control. Win by serving them, not by corralling them to fit your own desires.

Not that business people always get it wrong. Look at Reed Hastings and Netflix. He knew that streaming was the answer, he dropped the price and provided instant access. There was huge public outcry from people who wanted to rent DVDs. Do you know anyone who rents DVDS anymore? Do you know anyone who has a DVD player? Discs are dead. Hastings knew this already, the public had to catch up, and when it did people were satisfied, Netflix is burgeoning.

And Apple has eliminated disc drives from computers. The same way Steve Jobs got rid of legacy ports almost twenty years ago. Remember the outcry? That this also-ran computer company was leaving old customers in the dust, forcing them to buy new product? Well, that was back before Apple became a juggernaut, it was a harbinger of what was to come.

Just like this is.

People are sick and tired of losing their privacy. They’re sick and tired of being tracked. There’s nothing as weird as seeing an ad for a product follow you around the web. Do you want to trust these people? Did you trust the Stasi?

The ad companies are no different from the record companies, wanting to hold on to an old model that benefits them but not the user. Meanwhile, wannabe techies side with them the way wannabe musicians side with legacy artists in desiring the old model, they feel they’ve lost their opportunity. But isn’t it funny that today it’s the labels who are on the cutting edge, pushing streaming services, and the acts are the ones behind. Winners take stock of a changed world and adjust accordingly. Keep your music off Spotify? Put it everywhere and get people to listen to it. The rewards come when people know who you are, they’ll give you tons of money if only you create a bond.

And maybe that’s the future we’re going to, where people pay. It’s already happening in news. With soft paywalls. Turns out most people don’t want to read the “New York Times” anyway, and those who do gladly pay. As for those who bitch… I remember Michael Eisner saying that ten percent of people will never pay, but they seem to bitch loudest.

Not that I’m saying the public is completely trustworthy, that it doesn’t see the shenanigans of VW and take matters into its own hands, cutting corners. But I am saying if you’re dependent upon the public to make money, you’ve got to serve their dreams, not yours.

Furthermore, ad prices have been sinking online, because spots are ineffectual. The web is littered with link-bait no better than Nigerian money scams. You see these stories everywhere, who are the nincompoops who click through?

As for YouTube pre-roll… Where can I pay to make it go away? Rates are abysmal, but I’ll pay dollars to make ads disappear. Where do I enter my credit card number?

And you’re telling me I spend nearly a grand for an iPhone and I’m beholden to ads which ruin my experience? Isn’t this what killed the PC makers, who loaded up your new computer with bloatware you never wanted and had a hard time eliminating? Sure, it lowered the cost of the product, but then all the profits went to Apple.

Just like they do now.

That’s the lesson here. People trust Apple. Believe the company is on their side. They don’t mind paying a high price for the experience.

And it’s the same way in every walk of life. It’s the public that likes scalping, at least they can go to the show, even if the price is high. Scalpers charge fair market value, acts are living in an alternative universe where they want to look fair with low prices but are actually screwing their customers. Turns out most of their fans WANT to pay more, and acts should let them!

And Android is hobbled by ancient operating systems that can’t be upgraded. Based upon advertising, the experience is substandard and people are opting to pay more for iPhones. But I thought everybody was cheap, that no one wanted to pay? Well, Apple’s got all the profits in handsets, so you should contemplate that.

Ads are dying in television. They’ve hobbled radio. And now you’ve got internet sites telling us they must remain? Make me laugh, when I’m not puking. There’s got to be a better way.

And it’s via trust.

If you can’t get the consumer on YOUR side, you’re doomed.

Isn’t that what we learned in the record business? That we had to proffer solutions people wanted? First with iTunes? As for streaming, the public has already voted, streaming has won by a landslide, it’s only the acts with their heads up their ass who believe otherwise. But you don’t win by bitching, you win by abandoning the old model and embracing the new.

People hate ads, they ruin the experience. That’s why they download ad-blockers.

And they laud Apple for providing them, isn’t that what we all want, a better experience in life? Isn’t that who we give money to?

The sands they are a-shifting. We have spam blockers, a whole industry trying to weed out bad e-mail, but we can’t get rid of bad ads?

Come on.

This is the new reality. If we lose a bunch of sites, so be it. Hell, if we can get rid of some spyware…

 

 

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What's been said:

Discussions found on the web:
  1. jbegan commented on Sep 20

    Bam! So true!

    “..but I’ll pay dollars to make ads disappear.” I get a kick out of HULU telling me that I should turn off my ad blocker so I can enjoy great movies at cheap prices… Uhhh …Netflix is about the same price and no ads… And a lot of the shows on HULU are available on the TV Networks’ websites with ads, but for free. And now HULU emails me that I can enjoy an ad free experience for more money, in the dead season. They haven’t had anything worth watching for months… I mi-i-g-h-t consider it when they actually have programming.

  2. RW commented on Sep 20

    A reasonable summation of user perspective. Things are gonna change.

    Stratechery has a nice expansion on this topic including strategic business directions.

  3. Iamthe50percent commented on Sep 20

    Even on desktop with lots of space, those popup ads that move around blocking your view are extremely annoying. I’ve whitelisted your site, but I notice that there are no less than 11 trackers blocked by Ghostery. Why do you want to invade my privacy and cyber-stalk me?

  4. kaleberg commented on Sep 20

    Maybe they’ll enable spam blocking on iPhones next. That would be a great new feature. Go Apple.

  5. hidflect commented on Sep 20

    People don’t mind the monetary cost to pay. It’s the inconvenience, risk and delay of paying; that’s the huge demotivator. If there was a way I could be auto-charged 2c per article I read through my browser, I’d love it. (Can it be that hard to implement?) Surf 50 of my favourite blogs for the price of a newspaper and see all of those bloggers make a liveable income from their endeavour. And no ads. Everybody wins.

  6. WickedGreen commented on Sep 21

    The VW story has all the ingredients of a consumer resentment stew:

    Bald-faced lying
    Skirting official rules
    Dumping trash on the public
    Taking advantage of concern for the common welfare for limited gain

    Surprised? Only in terms of the audacity of the scale.

    • ottnott commented on Sep 22

      The investment banks and their kin thank you for overlooking their decades of robbing the public in the manner you describe, and focusing instead on an auto company that has had perhaps 1000th the impact on the public.

      I’m not suggesting that VW gets a pass. I want them hammered. I want corporate executives named, charged, and tried. But, I am marveling at the ability of the financial industries to seemingly hypnotize us into accepting that, because we do need the financial services they provide, we also need to let them feast on our blood in order to get those services.

  7. NoKidding commented on Sep 21

    Why take a 2nd paragraph potshot at a political party? Article is about the internet business model, right?

    How do you factor in monthly payments for cell phone data plans and fiber/cable/DSL when considering internet content free?

    How is musical content different than blog content? ex.Is reading this article today and likely forgetting it next week equivalent to buying an iTunes song and likely listening to for years at no additional cost, probably memorizing the words to your favorites?

    How is online television content different from news content? ex. Do typical customers search an ocean of tv series by keywords and sample unexpected content, or do they go right for a thing they planned to have?

  8. DeDude commented on Sep 21

    Eventually we will have services that connect you to the internet but with a filter that takes out all the stuff you do not want “connection” with. I would pay money for such an intermediary service.

  9. reedsch commented on Sep 22

    Where the train ran off the tracks:
    http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/08/advertising-is-the-internets-original-sin/376041

    My pet theory (open to challenge of course) is that the banks (or VISA & Mastercard) did not want to process micropayments. You should be able to pay a dime or nickel or even a penny to read an article or look at a video. If I got a million hits on a goofy cat video that I collected a penny per each view, I could be a happy man. No way goofy cat video producers can accrue enough cred to sell their own ads, so the fruits go to the consolidators, similar to the way Funniest Home Videos gets free content and only has to pay a stand-up comic and reap millions in ad revenue. Of course now the winners want to keep it that way, so kindly permit me to administer the killer blow: “Dear advertiser: I NEVER look at your ads and NEVER buy anything off them, so you are throwing your money away for nothing. Sucker!”

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