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by skydhash 1072 days ago
> The real issue IMO is that users do not understand that ads pay for their apps

Because it does not make any sense. No one wants to be shown something he does not find interesting or important, even if they say that they will. So if you believe people should watch, read, or listen to your ads, you've been living in a bubble.

> They want everything free.

It would be nice if everything were free, but only small children believe that. People know they got to pay for cars, houses, clothes, and education. And they do because it's valuable. They also pay for apps that are valuable to them. If they don't use something unless it's free, that's because its value is 0.

> This just encourages subscriptions.

There are subscriptions in the real world, like phone, internet, and electricity. I do not mind subscriptions, for music streaming, or apps that require continuous maintenance (support fees). But most apps are done (or should be, apart from the bugs) and they should just provide a license. New feature requests should be added to the backlog for the new version.

Take Duolingo, I could have paid $3 a month for the service (that's their value to me). But no way, I'm paying $7 a month. However, they say: "Hey, you can use it for free". So, I do. And the ads are just so ugly that they bring the whole app down to their level. So now, I'm even less appreciative of their service. And when the ads will get too irritating, I will just stop using their "free" service. And I've paid the 273 dollars for a Michel Thomas course. Because no ads, just good content.

2 comments

> If they don't use something unless it's free, that's because its value is 0.

I'd say that it is because the value is less than the transaction cost of any payment, not zero.

> The real issue IMO is that users do not understand that ads pay for their apps. Because it does not make any sense. No one wants to be shown something he does not find interesting or important, even if they say that they will. So if you believe people should watch, read, or listen to your ads, you've been living in a bubble.

It's either watch some ads, or work slightly harder to make slightly more money, to afford a subscribtion (or forgo some other pleasure, and reallocate that money to subscribtion instead). Both options are unpleasant, but of the two, majority of people seem to prefer ads.

To the downvoters: YouTube has been, for a couple years now, conducting a natural experiment that my confirms my claim. People can either buy a subscribtion or suffer the ads. Most prefer the ads.
I don't think that's a good experiment, though. Regardless of people's overall preference on this, I would expect the existing YouTube audience to mostly stay with the ad-supported stuff, because that's what they're used to with YouTube and people who really, really hate ads weren't using YouTube to begin with. All of that makes YouTube users a biased sample.

A more valid experiment would require all users to be new to the platform.

> weren't using YouTube to begin with

Or using it with an ad blocker