I’m curious if there is any reason we should expect paying for ad-free media and software to ultimately go any better than cable TV did. Being ad-free was one of the original promises of paying for a TV subscription in the first place, and now we ended up with both ads and subscription fees in ever-increasing amounts. Well, up until the point that many of us are cutting cable and getting everything online. Right now there’s a lot of competition among streaming providers targeting different parts of the spectra for media access, payment, and advertising exposure, but I suspect it’s partly a matter of the Powers That Be not yet having found strategies to lock up the market in some way.
I’m curious if there is any reason we should expect paying for ad-free media and software to ultimately go any better than cable TV did.
I don’t think “ultimately” has any place in this conversation. We’re nowhere near the ultimate, and won’t be for a long time. This is likely to be a cyclic equilibrium, where it swings between more reasonable and less. It happened for TV disaggregation—the power of TiVo to skip ads varied over time as ad-injection tech changed, then paying for ad-free, then paying more for ad-free, then some services that don’t have an ad-free tier. It’s happening on the web and in apps—many have an ad-free tier if you pay, and there are ad-blockers with varying degrees of effectiveness. And counter-technology to detect the ad-blockers, in an interesting but non-static arms race.
I think it won’t be long (under a decade) before wearable ad-blockers are available for the rich. And then ads will start incorporating detection-blockers, and the ad-blockers will start selling replacement ad space, and then something else will change.
People’s attention and beliefs are far too valuable to let them keep.
To be honest, I don’t care how things will go in the future: at the moment, I’m paying, now, to not experience ads, and I’m hoping that my purchasing decisions in this vein will encourage the sort of behaviour I want. If hosts start incorporating ads into their patron podcasts they’ll lose my $5/mo and receive a polite but firm note explaining why.
I’m curious if there is any reason we should expect paying for ad-free media and software to ultimately go any better than cable TV did. Being ad-free was one of the original promises of paying for a TV subscription in the first place, and now we ended up with both ads and subscription fees in ever-increasing amounts. Well, up until the point that many of us are cutting cable and getting everything online. Right now there’s a lot of competition among streaming providers targeting different parts of the spectra for media access, payment, and advertising exposure, but I suspect it’s partly a matter of the Powers That Be not yet having found strategies to lock up the market in some way.
I don’t think “ultimately” has any place in this conversation. We’re nowhere near the ultimate, and won’t be for a long time. This is likely to be a cyclic equilibrium, where it swings between more reasonable and less. It happened for TV disaggregation—the power of TiVo to skip ads varied over time as ad-injection tech changed, then paying for ad-free, then paying more for ad-free, then some services that don’t have an ad-free tier. It’s happening on the web and in apps—many have an ad-free tier if you pay, and there are ad-blockers with varying degrees of effectiveness. And counter-technology to detect the ad-blockers, in an interesting but non-static arms race.
I think it won’t be long (under a decade) before wearable ad-blockers are available for the rich. And then ads will start incorporating detection-blockers, and the ad-blockers will start selling replacement ad space, and then something else will change.
People’s attention and beliefs are far too valuable to let them keep.
To be honest, I don’t care how things will go in the future: at the moment, I’m paying, now, to not experience ads, and I’m hoping that my purchasing decisions in this vein will encourage the sort of behaviour I want. If hosts start incorporating ads into their patron podcasts they’ll lose my $5/mo and receive a polite but firm note explaining why.