7 ms·

As soon as ad supported free services start shutting down because of ad blocking and lowered clickthrough rates on ads because of targeting being blocked, most

As soon as ad supported free services start shutting down because of ad blocking and lowered clickthrough rates on ads because of targeting being blocked, most people will probably start changing their minds. (The alternative being maintaining 10-20+ paid subscriptions.) For now, all this change means is that users who are opted-in to tracking are subsidising those who aren't.

suction 5y ago
At least then they'll be aware of the deal they're agreeing to.
shadilay 5y ago
Or people will realize the service isn't as valuable as what's being charged. No one asked for 80% of facebooks features, it could be run/maintained by a much smaller team.
- wintermutestwin 5y ago
  So much this. All I wanted was a simple way to share pics and updates with family and friends. Instead, I got an anal probe and mind control. Seriously, it is harder and harder to actually find my family and friends on their convoluted mess of a site.
ggggtez 5y ago
The problem with this kind of thinking is that if Cable TV is any indication, things that start as subscription services will slowly begin to double-dip and you'll be paying money upfront and watching ads anyway.
- Workaccount2 5y ago
  At least now we have piracy as a counter balance for that.
cheschire 5y ago
If subscriptions were always as easy to manage in one place like they are on an iPhone, I would have absolutely no problem with 20 subscriptions. Where’s the subscription management startup model?
- Workaccount2 5y ago
  I've thought about this a lot, but the stumbling block for me is getting services onboard. The problem is that subscription services make billions annually on forgotten subscriptions. None of them want an easy "disable" slider next to their name in a convenient app. It also makes à la carte subing easy, where you sub for a month every few months to "catch up". Basically, good luck getting an API with an easy unsubscribe command from any subscription based service.
  - fullstop 5y ago
    > where you sub for a month every few months to "catch up". Make introductory rates low and let people lock in. If they unsub and then resub they will have to do so at a higher rate.
- bin_bash 5y ago
  I highly doubt that most users would be comfortable paying for 20 subscriptions—or even 1.
  - fouric 5y ago
    I think that this happens to be the case now, but is not an intrinsic property of humans. I think that we're living in an age where most consumers have been "programmed" to expect things for no financial cost and only a privacy cost. The key word here is "programmed" - and what has been programmed can be deprogrammed. I honestly believe that we can re-rehabilitate people to no longer automatically give away their privacy for a service, and instead consciously and carefully assess the financial cost vs. utility of a service. This could lead to both a reduction in the amount of available services (as smaller ones go out of business because people realized that it wasn't really worth it for them) and an increase in the number of services people are actually willing to pay real money for. Also, if the subscriptions were far cheaper (say, $2/month), I think that 20 concurrent subscriptions would be acceptable to many people.
makecheck 5y ago
This is not destroying the whole concept of ads, it is only pushing back against awful variants. It is definitely possible to have “nice” ads, like simple text or images, with no creepy or CPU-draining elements in them. Nothing is preventing those ads from supporting free services.
- rascul 5y ago
  I vaguely recall that Google used to use text ads. Not sure if they still do, or if I recall correctly.
  - als0 5y ago
    From a Google search I made in the last hour, the top 6 search results were all text ads.
    - rchaud 5y ago
      I think the OP meant AdSense (now Google Ads), which is when publishers display ads from Google's advertiser inventory. Those are a combination of text-only or banner ads. Although I mostly see banner ads on the rare occasions I turn off my adblocker.
    - rascul 5y ago
      I wasn't sure, I haven't used Google search (directly) for years now. I guess I could have checked. I didn't realize that until I saw your comment.
      - als0 5y ago
        Actually your sibling's comment made me realise that you were talking about the old style of ads in web pages. Within the Google search itself, I was surprised by the number of ads that are disguised as search results. It's grown significantly. Now I have to scroll to get real results...
  - handrous 5y ago
8ytecoder 5y ago
You seem to think it’s a bad thing. I’d argue “Free” products destroy innovation. It’s extremely hard to beat gmail or Facebook without massive VC funding.
- JohnFen 5y ago
  Yes, and just to underline your use of quote marks there, those "free" products aren't even remotely free. You're just paying with a different currency, and -- in my view -- it's absurdly expensive.
- fleddr 5y ago
  Underrated comment, well said. The "free" model supports billionaires and mega big tech. When paid services are normalized, it opens up a huge amount of potential for smaller players to innovate.
csilverman 5y ago
Or these ad companies could come up with ways of making money that people don't want to block. I despise ads, and generally approve of anything that makes ad companies sweat, but it didn't have to be that way. We are where we are because those ad companies have a sociopathically disrespectful attitude towards the people whose attention they need. With tactics like auto-playing videos, popovers, animated ads, and hideously obtrusive design, it was simply inevitable that people would try to get rid of that garbage. That approach to advertising is borne of greed and laziness, and it deserves to fail. But there are tech blogs I read that do not adopt that approach. They have small, tasteful, non-animated ads. They don't need to violate my privacy to have a good idea of the kinds of things I'd be interested in; the fact that I'm on a tech blog means I'm more receptive to ads for tech-related tools and services. The people who run these sites have more respect for their visitors, so they choose a more respectful approach to ads. Like I said: most companies' approach to ads is rooted in abject contempt for the people they need. If your business strategy is based on treating people badly, you have no grounds to complain when they decide not to put up with that anymore. You can either whine about how unfair it is and fail, or you can identify an approach that is appealing enough to be sustainable. This could be a chance for that much-vaunted market-force-shaped innovation. Facebook's current strategy—whining—suggests they're still stuck in the old way of thinking: greed and laziness.
- abruzzi 5y ago
  This sums up my thoughts perfectly. I would add a comment--all of the anti-apple voices in the article talk only about the poor business that will be hurt. The never talk about the benefit or drawback to the people being tracked. Their approach can be summed up as "we have a right to this data and telling people about our tracking and asking if it is alright with them is not alright." So businesses have rights but individuals don't. Personally, I hope things like this start to kill off the "free internet." I'd much rather pay for the things that I use.
masswerk 5y ago
How about tracking back to content related advertising rather than tracking based advertising? All related studies are showing that the latter isn't working anyway. And, as these metrics (and ethics) suggest, it has been an illegitimate invasion, right from the beginning. The fancy "conversion rate" dashboards are just not worth it. Bonus: Maybe this will be an opportunity for content providers to reset the decline of advertising prices that has happened over the last decade. (Remember the blooming blogger scene in the 2000s, when you could still make substantial revenues? Remember the thriving online news papers? We could get back there, if advertising became less invasive and less aggressive and also more profitable for content providers, e.g., how it had been in print.)
- saint_abroad 5y ago
  Indeed, maybe it's about time advertisers got back to sponsoring quality content their target audience enjoys, rather than direct marketing through the back door on the lowest common denominator.
- masswerk 5y ago
  P.S.: An interesting experiment may be an ad-blocker with an option "block animated ads and tracking only" (or rather, "show static ads only"). And maybe another option "filter ads to greyscale". I guess, reducing distraction and moving towards a client-based and user-controlled "ads manager" may have a decisive impact on overall blocking habits.
- bserge 5y ago
  Still not sure why that didn't become predominant. Dynamic content based ads seemed to be the new fad in late 00's, then it kinda disappeared, with user tracking becoming the norm.
- PaulHoule 5y ago
  Tracking is necessary for the advertising economy to control bad behavior on the part of publishers and advertisers, not just to serve targeted ads. No matter what there would be discrepancies in the numbers (publisher says it sent 75 clicks, advertiser says it got 70) and that breeds mistrust. Participants have a reason to lie. Having multiple third party watch the whole thing helps them trust each other.
yarcob 5y ago
You are making a few assumptions: 1) People want the services more than they value their privacy. Maybe they'll just not use the service if they can't use it without tracking 2) That invasive tracking is required to sell ads. The media industry made billions (trillions?) of revenue from ads before tracking became a thing. 3) That platform ads are the only way to make services that are free for consumers. For example, Vimeo offers an ad free video delivery service that the content creator pays for. If Youtube was no longer free, maybe content creators would just pay for content delivery instead of having consumers indirectly pay for deliver with ads. Content creators have no issue selling ads / sponsorships without any tracking whatsoever. The result would be the same as now (content free for consumers) only that now non-targeted ads would pay for everything. 4) And finally, you are assuming that targeting via tracking actually works well enough to make it worthwhile. From what I've read, ad targeting is nowhere near as good as Facebook et al would have advertisers believe. Maybe invading your users privcy just doesn't make such a big difference in the end.
naravara 5y ago
> As soon as ad supported free services start shutting down because of ad blocking and lowered clickthrough rates on ads because of targeting being blocked, most people will probably start changing their minds. Or they'll just go outside and find better uses for their time.
walkedaway 5y ago
Ads still exist. Advertising has existed for a long time, effectively, without personal tracking. This will weed out the players from the wannabes.
alkonaut 5y ago
If sites can’t fund their content with ads based information I’m willing to give up, then they can beg me for money, or charge for the content, or beg me to look at ads or whatever. But I want that transaction to be transparent and deliberate. And I don’t care if 90% of content online just disappears because we click the privacy button. Then it was never a viable business model to begin with.
- JKCalhoun 5y ago
  Yes, if Facebook goes away due to lack of ads and no paid subscribers it means it simply was not worth paying for in enough people's minds. Imagine that your entire business is only appealing to people if it is free. I mean a lot of crappy 70's sitcoms would not exist if people had to buy tickets to watch. Honestly, I would not mind that world. :-)
  - jfengel 5y ago
    It seems that the news is only appealing to people when it's free. In part that's because it's competing with a lot of other things that are free -- including "news" subsidized by those who want to influence what news you consume. People really like free. When it's there, it will tend to suck the air out of almost everything else. Including things that are almost-but-not-quite-free.
    - JKCalhoun 5y ago
      Yeah, I admit news might be the exception here.
- rchaud 5y ago
  > Then it was never a viable business model to begin with. I think there's much more evidence to the contrary than there is for your position. Facebook is absurdly, staggeringly profitable. Uber and WeWork by comparison are the BS business models, needing to break local laws and requiring nation-state levels of VC backing and still nowhere near profitability.
JKCalhoun 5y ago
I don't know. I think when ad supported free services start shutting down people will move on with their lives. We'll find out instead how really unimportant Facebook, etc. was in people's lives. Put another way, how on earth did people get along without Facebook before there was a Facebook? I'm reminded of a comment from the guy that created the TV-B-Gone. He would turn off TV's in public places like self-service laundromats, etc. He said he was surprised by the general reaction of those that had just recently been transfixed by the flickering 60Hz cathode glow. Mostly they just turned away form the TV and went back to quiet thoughts or whatever. It was like the TV could go away and people would be like, "okay".
- b3morales 5y ago
  This might just be me, but I've always found that TVs in public have this weird pull to them. Even if I have no feelings at all about what's on the screen (a soap opera I've never seen?) my gaze is still repeatedly drawn to it. If there's one around I generally try to position myself so it's not in my peripheral vision or I have to spend some effort ignoring it. It feels like whatever it is that keeps kids, as we say, "glued to the screen" doesn't always go away in adulthood. I would definitely find it relieving if someone showed up with a TV-B-Gone and clicked it off.
  - tatersolid 5y ago
    Humans are genetically programmed to focus on motion. This has its advantages for a hunter-gatherer out on the savannah.
handrous 5y ago
It's hard to know what the Web, social media, and tech generally might look like if the spyvertising money-spigot gets shut off. Paid and fully-free-and-open alternatives to spying-paid "free" services & content are nearly impossible in the former case, and discouraging to participate or work on in the latter, in the current environment. There may be other models, too, that are in some sense better or preferable, or at least acceptable or sufficient, but currently not viable.
Iv 5y ago
Mark my words: as soon as the world starts to turn their back on advertisement, there will be several micropayement unicorns flourishing in the next 6 months. 20+ paid subscriptions make no sense, but checking a box with your ISP to get a 2 USD monthly credit to use on the articles you click on, could work.
- kalleboo 5y ago
  I'm still disappointed that Flattr never took off
  - Iv 5y ago
    I still have an account!
pyronik19 5y ago
I loose no sleep if these products go paid only and facebook loses its influence massively and with it their ability to censor and manipulate information and our elections.
wolpoli 5y ago
Do you have any examples of ad supported free services that you think are at risk of shutting down?
lkrubner 5y ago
"Users who are opted-in to tracking are subsidising those who aren't" Which gives them leverage. If they were better organized, they could make demands based on that leverage.

suction 5y ago

At least then they'll be aware of the deal they're agreeing to.

shadilay 5y ago

Or people will realize the service isn't as valuable as what's being charged. No one asked for 80% of facebooks features, it could be run/maintained by a much smaller team.

wintermutestwin 5y ago
So much this. All I wanted was a simple way to share pics and updates with family and friends. Instead, I got an anal probe and mind control. Seriously, it is harder and harder to actually find my family and friends on their convoluted mess of a site.

ggggtez 5y ago

The problem with this kind of thinking is that if Cable TV is any indication, things that start as subscription services will slowly begin to double-dip and you'll be paying money upfront and watching ads anyway.

Workaccount2 5y ago
At least now we have piracy as a counter balance for that.

cheschire 5y ago

If subscriptions were always as easy to manage in one place like they are on an iPhone, I would have absolutely no problem with 20 subscriptions. Where’s the subscription management startup model?

Workaccount2 5y ago
I've thought about this a lot, but the stumbling block for me is getting services onboard. The problem is that subscription services make billions annually on forgotten subscriptions. None of them want an easy "disable" slider next to their name in a convenient app. It also makes à la carte subing easy, where you sub for a month every few months to "catch up". Basically, good luck getting an API with an easy unsubscribe command from any subscription based service.
- fullstop 5y ago
  > where you sub for a month every few months to "catch up". Make introductory rates low and let people lock in. If they unsub and then resub they will have to do so at a higher rate.
bin_bash 5y ago
I highly doubt that most users would be comfortable paying for 20 subscriptions—or even 1.
- fouric 5y ago
  I think that this happens to be the case now, but is not an intrinsic property of humans. I think that we're living in an age where most consumers have been "programmed" to expect things for no financial cost and only a privacy cost. The key word here is "programmed" - and what has been programmed can be deprogrammed. I honestly believe that we can re-rehabilitate people to no longer automatically give away their privacy for a service, and instead consciously and carefully assess the financial cost vs. utility of a service. This could lead to both a reduction in the amount of available services (as smaller ones go out of business because people realized that it wasn't really worth it for them) and an increase in the number of services people are actually willing to pay real money for. Also, if the subscriptions were far cheaper (say, $2/month), I think that 20 concurrent subscriptions would be acceptable to many people.

makecheck 5y ago

This is not destroying the whole concept of ads, it is only pushing back against awful variants. It is definitely possible to have “nice” ads, like simple text or images, with no creepy or CPU-draining elements in them. Nothing is preventing those ads from supporting free services.

rascul 5y ago
I vaguely recall that Google used to use text ads. Not sure if they still do, or if I recall correctly.
- als0 5y ago
  From a Google search I made in the last hour, the top 6 search results were all text ads.
  - rchaud 5y ago
    I think the OP meant AdSense (now Google Ads), which is when publishers display ads from Google's advertiser inventory. Those are a combination of text-only or banner ads. Although I mostly see banner ads on the rare occasions I turn off my adblocker.
  - rascul 5y ago
    I wasn't sure, I haven't used Google search (directly) for years now. I guess I could have checked. I didn't realize that until I saw your comment.
    - als0 5y ago
      Actually your sibling's comment made me realise that you were talking about the old style of ads in web pages. Within the Google search itself, I was surprised by the number of ads that are disguised as search results. It's grown significantly. Now I have to scroll to get real results...
- handrous 5y ago

8ytecoder 5y ago

You seem to think it’s a bad thing. I’d argue “Free” products destroy innovation. It’s extremely hard to beat gmail or Facebook without massive VC funding.

JohnFen 5y ago
Yes, and just to underline your use of quote marks there, those "free" products aren't even remotely free. You're just paying with a different currency, and -- in my view -- it's absurdly expensive.
fleddr 5y ago
Underrated comment, well said. The "free" model supports billionaires and mega big tech. When paid services are normalized, it opens up a huge amount of potential for smaller players to innovate.

csilverman 5y ago

Or these ad companies could come up with ways of making money that people don't want to block. I despise ads, and generally approve of anything that makes ad companies sweat, but it didn't have to be that way. We are where we are because those ad companies have a sociopathically disrespectful attitude towards the people whose attention they need. With tactics like auto-playing videos, popovers, animated ads, and hideously obtrusive design, it was simply inevitable that people would try to get rid of that garbage. That approach to advertising is borne of greed and laziness, and it deserves to fail. But there are tech blogs I read that do not adopt that approach. They have small, tasteful, non-animated ads. They don't need to violate my privacy to have a good idea of the kinds of things I'd be interested in; the fact that I'm on a tech blog means I'm more receptive to ads for tech-related tools and services. The people who run these sites have more respect for their visitors, so they choose a more respectful approach to ads. Like I said: most companies' approach to ads is rooted in abject contempt for the people they need. If your business strategy is based on treating people badly, you have no grounds to complain when they decide not to put up with that anymore. You can either whine about how unfair it is and fail, or you can identify an approach that is appealing enough to be sustainable. This could be a chance for that much-vaunted market-force-shaped innovation. Facebook's current strategy—whining—suggests they're still stuck in the old way of thinking: greed and laziness.

abruzzi 5y ago
This sums up my thoughts perfectly. I would add a comment--all of the anti-apple voices in the article talk only about the poor business that will be hurt. The never talk about the benefit or drawback to the people being tracked. Their approach can be summed up as "we have a right to this data and telling people about our tracking and asking if it is alright with them is not alright." So businesses have rights but individuals don't. Personally, I hope things like this start to kill off the "free internet." I'd much rather pay for the things that I use.

masswerk 5y ago

How about tracking back to content related advertising rather than tracking based advertising? All related studies are showing that the latter isn't working anyway. And, as these metrics (and ethics) suggest, it has been an illegitimate invasion, right from the beginning. The fancy "conversion rate" dashboards are just not worth it. Bonus: Maybe this will be an opportunity for content providers to reset the decline of advertising prices that has happened over the last decade. (Remember the blooming blogger scene in the 2000s, when you could still make substantial revenues? Remember the thriving online news papers? We could get back there, if advertising became less invasive and less aggressive and also more profitable for content providers, e.g., how it had been in print.)

saint_abroad 5y ago
Indeed, maybe it's about time advertisers got back to sponsoring quality content their target audience enjoys, rather than direct marketing through the back door on the lowest common denominator.
masswerk 5y ago
P.S.: An interesting experiment may be an ad-blocker with an option "block animated ads and tracking only" (or rather, "show static ads only"). And maybe another option "filter ads to greyscale". I guess, reducing distraction and moving towards a client-based and user-controlled "ads manager" may have a decisive impact on overall blocking habits.
bserge 5y ago
Still not sure why that didn't become predominant. Dynamic content based ads seemed to be the new fad in late 00's, then it kinda disappeared, with user tracking becoming the norm.
PaulHoule 5y ago
Tracking is necessary for the advertising economy to control bad behavior on the part of publishers and advertisers, not just to serve targeted ads. No matter what there would be discrepancies in the numbers (publisher says it sent 75 clicks, advertiser says it got 70) and that breeds mistrust. Participants have a reason to lie. Having multiple third party watch the whole thing helps them trust each other.

yarcob 5y ago

You are making a few assumptions: 1) People want the services more than they value their privacy. Maybe they'll just not use the service if they can't use it without tracking 2) That invasive tracking is required to sell ads. The media industry made billions (trillions?) of revenue from ads before tracking became a thing. 3) That platform ads are the only way to make services that are free for consumers. For example, Vimeo offers an ad free video delivery service that the content creator pays for. If Youtube was no longer free, maybe content creators would just pay for content delivery instead of having consumers indirectly pay for deliver with ads. Content creators have no issue selling ads / sponsorships without any tracking whatsoever. The result would be the same as now (content free for consumers) only that now non-targeted ads would pay for everything. 4) And finally, you are assuming that targeting via tracking actually works well enough to make it worthwhile. From what I've read, ad targeting is nowhere near as good as Facebook et al would have advertisers believe. Maybe invading your users privcy just doesn't make such a big difference in the end.

naravara 5y ago

> As soon as ad supported free services start shutting down because of ad blocking and lowered clickthrough rates on ads because of targeting being blocked, most people will probably start changing their minds. Or they'll just go outside and find better uses for their time.

walkedaway 5y ago

Ads still exist. Advertising has existed for a long time, effectively, without personal tracking. This will weed out the players from the wannabes.

alkonaut 5y ago

If sites can’t fund their content with ads based information I’m willing to give up, then they can beg me for money, or charge for the content, or beg me to look at ads or whatever. But I want that transaction to be transparent and deliberate. And I don’t care if 90% of content online just disappears because we click the privacy button. Then it was never a viable business model to begin with.

JKCalhoun 5y ago
Yes, if Facebook goes away due to lack of ads and no paid subscribers it means it simply was not worth paying for in enough people's minds. Imagine that your entire business is only appealing to people if it is free. I mean a lot of crappy 70's sitcoms would not exist if people had to buy tickets to watch. Honestly, I would not mind that world. :-)
- jfengel 5y ago
  It seems that the news is only appealing to people when it's free. In part that's because it's competing with a lot of other things that are free -- including "news" subsidized by those who want to influence what news you consume. People really like free. When it's there, it will tend to suck the air out of almost everything else. Including things that are almost-but-not-quite-free.
  - JKCalhoun 5y ago
    Yeah, I admit news might be the exception here.
rchaud 5y ago
> Then it was never a viable business model to begin with. I think there's much more evidence to the contrary than there is for your position. Facebook is absurdly, staggeringly profitable. Uber and WeWork by comparison are the BS business models, needing to break local laws and requiring nation-state levels of VC backing and still nowhere near profitability.

JKCalhoun 5y ago

I don't know. I think when ad supported free services start shutting down people will move on with their lives. We'll find out instead how really unimportant Facebook, etc. was in people's lives. Put another way, how on earth did people get along without Facebook before there was a Facebook? I'm reminded of a comment from the guy that created the TV-B-Gone. He would turn off TV's in public places like self-service laundromats, etc. He said he was surprised by the general reaction of those that had just recently been transfixed by the flickering 60Hz cathode glow. Mostly they just turned away form the TV and went back to quiet thoughts or whatever. It was like the TV could go away and people would be like, "okay".

b3morales 5y ago
This might just be me, but I've always found that TVs in public have this weird pull to them. Even if I have no feelings at all about what's on the screen (a soap opera I've never seen?) my gaze is still repeatedly drawn to it. If there's one around I generally try to position myself so it's not in my peripheral vision or I have to spend some effort ignoring it. It feels like whatever it is that keeps kids, as we say, "glued to the screen" doesn't always go away in adulthood. I would definitely find it relieving if someone showed up with a TV-B-Gone and clicked it off.
- tatersolid 5y ago
  Humans are genetically programmed to focus on motion. This has its advantages for a hunter-gatherer out on the savannah.

handrous 5y ago

It's hard to know what the Web, social media, and tech generally might look like if the spyvertising money-spigot gets shut off. Paid and fully-free-and-open alternatives to spying-paid "free" services & content are nearly impossible in the former case, and discouraging to participate or work on in the latter, in the current environment. There may be other models, too, that are in some sense better or preferable, or at least acceptable or sufficient, but currently not viable.

Iv 5y ago

Mark my words: as soon as the world starts to turn their back on advertisement, there will be several micropayement unicorns flourishing in the next 6 months. 20+ paid subscriptions make no sense, but checking a box with your ISP to get a 2 USD monthly credit to use on the articles you click on, could work.

kalleboo 5y ago
I'm still disappointed that Flattr never took off
- Iv 5y ago
  I still have an account!

pyronik19 5y ago

I loose no sleep if these products go paid only and facebook loses its influence massively and with it their ability to censor and manipulate information and our elections.

wolpoli 5y ago

Do you have any examples of ad supported free services that you think are at risk of shutting down?

lkrubner 5y ago

"Users who are opted-in to tracking are subsidising those who aren't" Which gives them leverage. If they were better organized, they could make demands based on that leverage.