See I use yt premium but that’s because about 5 ish years ago me and 5 friends did a family deal that meant it was $4 per month each, I did rise to $6 per month a while ago but I still think that it’s a good deal. It’s been grandfathered in so it’s not a deal you can get anymore but if I was to loose that deal for any reason I wouldn’t pay for premium
I’d be really curious how much my internet use “costs” to advertisers and if I could/would pay that amount instead.
Like, the advertiser paid $0.0005 to serve that ad to me so I’ll just pay that amount directly to the site and not be served the ad. Just incorporate it into my internet bill and I’d pay just like I do for power or gas. And would my willingness to not see ads make me more or less valuable to advertisers and affect the math?
I don’t like the subscription model as it seems like the price point isn’t based on actual cost at all and like they’re double-dipping by still selling my info. Charge me the actual cost plus a reasonable profit margin of 10%-20%. How much would that be? Is advertising really so valuable that I wouldn’t be willing to pay that amount? If so, are advertisers overselling the efficacy of their product?
There were some microtransaction services that sort of worked like this. I think one was called Flattr? I don’t know how well they actually worked or what happened to them.
Go the other way and create anti advertising. Every time an ad invades your time, create your own ad like how you think it tastes like cancer or that you think this podcast broke up your marriage.
You get an ad for diet pills, and then instead of moving on with your life, create an ad saying those diet pills cause cancer and get those ads served in a vain hope to kill the initial ad.
I’m opposed to ads. I think they have taken over far too much of our lives. If advertising works by invading all our spaces and free time unchecked then wouldn’t leaving comments on those ads saying how annoyed you are with these products not counter act the encroaching mass advertisements. I think it would.
I think if people fought back against ads we could get some cool spaces back. Or at least stem this insane concept that every free space with a single eyeball gazing at it must be sold to someone hawking crap.
Reddit went to shit chasing ads. Twitter, YouTube, all of them turn to shit and manipulative doom scrolling ways so they can sell advertise space to us. Fuck them.
You might be interested in subvertising which actively works to reclaim the spaces invaded by advertising.
One could, in theory, download the posters and put them up over the relentlessly shite, unasked for adverts that permeate every part of your city. One could even buy a key which opens certain advert spaces - such as bus stops - and replace them with any image of your choosing. Obviously this is illegal and no one would ever do this, however, I assume wearing a hi-vis vest and beanie hat would work surprisingly well when not doing this illicit activity. Also, complain about the hourly rates if questioned and you’ll absolutely be left alone.
Haha love it. That’s shit I like to see. Is it not weird to anybody else that it hasn’t? Like we all respect ads like they don’t exist even though we’re living like roddy Popper in “they live”
I keep thinking that it might be a great way to do a website. As long as you have the content to make it worth it
But just super micro transactions, it charges fractions of cents for the things you do on it and doesn’t even charge until you hit a threshold. People could still use the site for free but once you have done enough in it, boom it shows you that you have enjoyed the site and asks for like $4. It would also help you recognize how much you use the site and get people to somewhat curb their time if they want.
Subscription works for like video platforms that makes curated content but otherwise I’d love to do a pay as I go to know I’m supporting them.
Yeah I wish the dev accepted donations. Ublock makes my life so much better and I have a hard time being online without it. That’s something I’d gladly donate to. You can donate to the maintainers of the block-lists though
And his reputation is solid. He passed on the original uBlock and its maintainer sold out so he went back and made uBlock Origin.
Nice of him to mention uBlock Origin is nothing without the maintainers of the block lists it depends on and somewhere else mentions people should donate to those instead. Nice to see some parts of the Internet are resisting the enshitification, or, in this case, actively fighting it.
Honestly I never understood why ads try so hard to be annoying like I just don’t see how that is more profitable than making a ad that simply makes your product look good somehow they must be working as they are so prominent but I still just don’t get it
Somewhere, some metric told them that they don’t need to make good ads that explain the product. They only need to be as annoying as possible to garner attention, and put their branding on the end to be remembered.
Marketing is about hacking your brain in order to sell you products you do not need. It is horrible and should be banned entirely.
A diamond store in Canada has horrible ads with a man screaming in them. (all Canadians know who I am talking about already) I turn their ads off or switch radio stations when I hear them. If I was going to buy diamond jewellery I would go out of my way to buy from the store that is the furthest away from any of there stores even if it cost more. I would buy any mineral other than diamonds though.
I’m sad to say that those advertisements worked on me. When a young man needs to buy an engagement ring, name recognition, albeit in a negative light, got me to spend money with them. I just went to the first place that popped in my head.
Yes, it is propaganda, and to build on the comment you’re replying to, one of the tactics they use instead of explaining their product is simply repetitiveness.
If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. -Joseph Goebbels
Simply repeat your ad often enough in front of enough people, and an amount of those people will stop questioning the ad and take it as gospel.
They work enough, and enough is a surprisingly small amount. I imagine most click through rates are sub 1%, but with the right ratio to impressions, that can be a huge uplift to your sign ups / purchases / whatever
Because, in the golden days of ads, your metrics were bullshit. You had a print ad and someone said that they sold this many issues and, because of the papers totally not biased market research the told you that for every paper sold, x more people saw your ad. Same with TV and Radio, most numbers around viewers or listeners are basically made up with some fancy statistics.
With the Internet, suddenly you had hard data - your ad has been requested x times. But, that data was always below the fancy print/tv/radio numbers, so the companies had to either push more or reduce prices. That’s how they designed more and more intrusive ads like the ones with the shitty hidden close icon. The longer you need to close it, the longer is the “ad viewed” metric. The more you click on fake X buttons, the higher is the click rate or click through rate. Ad metrics have always been a scam and no one wants to change it.
Of course it is also possible to get click through rare and even track add-to-carts and purchases… So you would think that would drive more compelling ads. But then the ad companies charge per click so naturally they want to encourage clicking in any way possible.
That being said, you now know that diamond store. How many other diamond stores do you remember off the top of your head?
Thing is, chances are that now you’ll check them out before selling or buying diamonds, and if they are worth it enough, you’ll go there. And if not you, most other people.
Zoomers for instance will see an ad to download something and they’d download it. Millennials won’t click ads at all but if they see a software ad then they will assume it’s a scam and avoid that software
So if you are making an ad you want to focus on the Zoomer demographic
As far as annoying, look at the type of YouTubers that Zoomers like. They like annoying things
There’s a fundamental problem within the marketing industry, that almost nothing that’s being sold is something you even remotely need. Economics says that consumers are rational. If that’s the case we would almost never buy anything. Marketing exists at odds with that principle.
If you won’t buy it unless you need it, then they have to create need with their marketing.
If they’re selling you a pen, any pen will write, but this pen will change the way you write! It’s life changing! You need this pen, it’ll be the last pen you ever buy!
If they can’t convince you to need it, you won’t buy it.
There’s another problem, and that’s that we, collectively, are losing our attention spans. The constant access to new media means we never have to spend long on anything, something new is always at our fingertips, and we, collectively, aren’t really that patient anymore.
Before you comment on this with some anecdote about how you’ve only gotten more focused, actually. That’s missing the point, in general we’re getting worse, not better.
So now ads can’t take the time to tell you how great this pen is, really, even if it will change your life, they only have about 5 seconds before you’ve forgotten about it forever. So they have to be louder, more aggressive, and more pervasive. In whatever breed of tiktok style content you choose, you’ll stumble across videos that are blatant ads for a product that make no mention of it. Ads disguised as content, in the modern format. “Hi guys so I just got this pen and it’s l1t3rally life changing” over the top of a cool looking pen writing smoothly.
Will it work on you? Probably not, advertising gains take place in tenths of percentage points. You’re a smart consumer and never fall for such blatant ads, and for you they have a tactic too. Every single piece of content you consume is just full of ads, subtly conditioning you towards every product on the planet. Because if they don’t, you’ll keep your old shit that still works and never buy anything.
I’m a big fan of Pilot G2s, though I find the finer ones don’t last through an entire cartridge.
I specifically used pens because how pointless a good pen is, when the 5 dollar box of 60 Bic Round Stick Ms is perfectly acceptable and it’s literally the only pen most people will use every day if they use one that frequently.
A great pen is only a little better than a good one, and bad pens are available at every price.
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