Having worked in advertising for 4 years, I am not convinced. Citation is needed. It also implies these are the only two options, but consider the very webpage you are on currently: no ads, no paywall! What’s going on?!
Which is only to say that there are other options to explore. That those two models are the most prevalent does not mean they are the only viable options (think of how easy it is to go with an ad-model if users have been trained to accept it as the status-quo, which is self-enforcing, and how viable some other models might be if we all magically agreed that ads=unacceptable).
I started writing this comment with hesitation because I did not want it to just say ‘This whole post reads like a rationalisation and I disagree with it’, so let me try and come up with a question instead (actually just deleted a large rant on perverse incentives, which I think other commenters have done better). There was an earlier question posted by Alexei, mine are in the same vein:
if advertising was not an option (eg banned and enforceably so), what would the internet look like?
if there was a better payment model for the internet (say, magical space-aliens commit to funding it entirely, as a joke), what would advertising as a business look like in that case? How does that change your position on advertising as a whole, if it all? Would you still want to work in advertising? (The aliens allow you to keep your current salary. They have a weird sense of humour)
consider the very webpage you are on currently: no ads, no paywall
Less wrong is funded by donations. So is Wikipedia. I touch on this in the post, but I think a model where donations fund the operations of most sites, let alone most journalism, is far from practical?
if advertising was not an option (eg banned and enforceably so), what would the internet look like?
I had a crack at answering this from the perspective of what this would do to products a couple years ago: Effect of Advertising.
From the perspective of users, I think the internet would be essentially unusable unless you subscribed to a few standard services, which would then have harmful levels of leverage. This is the “You can sort of fix friction with bundling...” paragraph above.
if there was a better payment model for the internet (say, magical space-aliens commit to funding it entirely, as a joke), what would advertising as a business look like in that case?
I’m not really sure what your hypothetical is supposed to be? For example, if I start a news site and I want to employ journalists, will the magical space aliens give me as much money as I want for their salaries?
From the perspective of users, I think the internet would be essentially unusable unless you subscribed to a few standard services, which would then have harmful levels of leverage.
I wonder about that: before third-party services started popping up, internet service providers and nonprofits used to offer more services that are now offered by third parties. E.g. your ISP used to give you an e-mail account and website space, and services such as Usenet and IRC functioned in a decentralized fashion, with servers being hosted by universities, ISPs and others. That model won’t work for everything, but it doesn’t seem like too much of a stretch to imagine services such as social media and search shifting to a more decentralized model if advertising was banned. (Decentralized social media networks such as Diaspora already exist; I’m under the impression that the main reason they’re not used more is that network effects create too much lock-in to existing, more centralized services.)
Thanks for the link to your earlier post, it makes your position a little more clear.
I think we make different predictions, probably because (A) we are biased and (B) ads and the internet are so entangled by now that it is hard to make a predication like that. Any prediction will need to take into account a multitude of factors.
The line on aliens paying your salary was added because I wanted to preempt the response ‘well if ads are no longer the payment model I’d need to find another job’. But you’re right to ask that question you did, it is still a weird hypothetical. What I meant to do with it is have all the external costs covered, i.e. hosting fees. What if ads only ‘had’ to cover the costs of hiring those journalists? Ads could be constrained to a more commercial domain, and websites such as lesswrong.com wouldn’t have to exist by grace of donations only. I think one thing I do not like about ads is how any webpage that gets big enough will add ads out of necessity just to cover their sudden spike in costs. Take that factor away and perhaps ads can be added as a precision tool rather than a blunt instrument: allow them only where they make sense / add value (if you believe in that) ?
Perhaps true in lesswrong’s case (is it still under active development then?). You’ll have to suffer me moving the goalposts again, because what I was getting at was websites that serve fairly static content. If lesswrong is actively developed and has taken a lot of effort to build, then take a random wordpress page instead.
No the aliens don’t pay for developer time, for the same reason they don’t pay the journalists.
I think one thing I do not like about ads is how any webpage that gets big enough will add ads out of necessity just to cover their sudden spike in costs.
Why do you believe that to be true? For what websites do you believe it to be true? I would expect that any content website that’s big enough that hosting fees are the primary issue for raising money can fund hosting fees via Patreon.
Because I used to work for/with companies whose business model was mostly free access covered by ads. Costs of keeping those sites running were substantial and proportional to amount of visitors.
Having worked in advertising for 4 years, I am not convinced. Citation is needed. It also implies these are the only two options, but consider the very webpage you are on currently: no ads, no paywall! What’s going on?!
Which is only to say that there are other options to explore. That those two models are the most prevalent does not mean they are the only viable options (think of how easy it is to go with an ad-model if users have been trained to accept it as the status-quo, which is self-enforcing, and how viable some other models might be if we all magically agreed that ads=unacceptable).
I started writing this comment with hesitation because I did not want it to just say ‘This whole post reads like a rationalisation and I disagree with it’, so let me try and come up with a question instead (actually just deleted a large rant on perverse incentives, which I think other commenters have done better). There was an earlier question posted by Alexei, mine are in the same vein:
if advertising was not an option (eg banned and enforceably so), what would the internet look like?
if there was a better payment model for the internet (say, magical space-aliens commit to funding it entirely, as a joke), what would advertising as a business look like in that case? How does that change your position on advertising as a whole, if it all? Would you still want to work in advertising? (The aliens allow you to keep your current salary. They have a weird sense of humour)
Less wrong is funded by donations. So is Wikipedia. I touch on this in the post, but I think a model where donations fund the operations of most sites, let alone most journalism, is far from practical?
I had a crack at answering this from the perspective of what this would do to products a couple years ago: Effect of Advertising.
From the perspective of users, I think the internet would be essentially unusable unless you subscribed to a few standard services, which would then have harmful levels of leverage. This is the “You can sort of fix friction with bundling...” paragraph above.
I’m not really sure what your hypothetical is supposed to be? For example, if I start a news site and I want to employ journalists, will the magical space aliens give me as much money as I want for their salaries?
I wonder about that: before third-party services started popping up, internet service providers and nonprofits used to offer more services that are now offered by third parties. E.g. your ISP used to give you an e-mail account and website space, and services such as Usenet and IRC functioned in a decentralized fashion, with servers being hosted by universities, ISPs and others. That model won’t work for everything, but it doesn’t seem like too much of a stretch to imagine services such as social media and search shifting to a more decentralized model if advertising was banned. (Decentralized social media networks such as Diaspora already exist; I’m under the impression that the main reason they’re not used more is that network effects create too much lock-in to existing, more centralized services.)
Thanks for the link to your earlier post, it makes your position a little more clear. I think we make different predictions, probably because (A) we are biased and (B) ads and the internet are so entangled by now that it is hard to make a predication like that. Any prediction will need to take into account a multitude of factors.
The line on aliens paying your salary was added because I wanted to preempt the response ‘well if ads are no longer the payment model I’d need to find another job’. But you’re right to ask that question you did, it is still a weird hypothetical. What I meant to do with it is have all the external costs covered, i.e. hosting fees. What if ads only ‘had’ to cover the costs of hiring those journalists? Ads could be constrained to a more commercial domain, and websites such as lesswrong.com wouldn’t have to exist by grace of donations only. I think one thing I do not like about ads is how any webpage that gets big enough will add ads out of necessity just to cover their sudden spike in costs. Take that factor away and perhaps ads can be added as a precision tool rather than a blunt instrument: allow them only where they make sense / add value (if you believe in that) ?
The primary cost of websites like lesswrong is not hosting fees, but developer time. By a huge margin. Are the aliens paying for that too?
Perhaps true in lesswrong’s case (is it still under active development then?). You’ll have to suffer me moving the goalposts again, because what I was getting at was websites that serve fairly static content. If lesswrong is actively developed and has taken a lot of effort to build, then take a random wordpress page instead.
No the aliens don’t pay for developer time, for the same reason they don’t pay the journalists.
Why do you believe that to be true? For what websites do you believe it to be true? I would expect that any content website that’s big enough that hosting fees are the primary issue for raising money can fund hosting fees via Patreon.
Because I used to work for/with companies whose business model was mostly free access covered by ads. Costs of keeping those sites running were substantial and proportional to amount of visitors.