I fully agree with the sentiment, and yet marvel at the apparent lack of alternatives for so many business models. I'm mildly surprised, for example, that micro-payments for web content are still not a (widespread) thing.
Consumers hate ads, but they hate paying for things even more apparently.
It's not really clear to me that consumers hate ads. It seems like more of a tech niche opinion; most people are perfectly fine with watching TV commercials (and look forward to them at the Super Bowl) and don't mind using ad-tier streaming plans. Ad blockers are used by a tiny, tiny percentage of total browser users. And so on.
Look at literally any poll on the topic - people hate ads universally, with advertisers not far behind. And ad blocker usage has skyrocketed. It's now up to ~30% of all internet users [1] with younger people starting to approach a majority. And it should go without saying that the only reason that's not near 100% of users is because most people don't know they exist and/or don't feel comfortable installing one.
Even ignoring the sibling comment debunking your "tiny, tiny percentage"...
There's a huge difference between extremely-high-production-value Superbowl ads and regular TV ads.
There's another huge difference between regular TV ads and some of the ads you can get on YouTube (example: someone I follow decided, For Science™, to actually watch the entirety of a 5-hour ad they got on YouTube for...I think it was one of the Lego Movies? It consisted entirely of an endless repetition of the same 3-minute-ish song).
There's also a huge difference between what people are willing to tolerate in order to reduce some of the often-absurd financial burden they're being put under, and what people actually like, or are genuinely content with.
"Revealed preference" theory is a bunch of motivated reasoning.
One problem is transaction costs; you need aggregators to sit in the middle, adding up the people paying and to be paid out. Structurally, aggregators are then in a position to extract rents. Which they will do, sooner or later.
There are of course other problems, fraud, money laundering and the like, which extract taxes, and and a whole patchwork quilt of national regulations, which extracts a lot more.
Things like crypto look, feel and smell like money laundering. I don't think there's a technical solution here. The problems are social and regulatory.
keiferski|1 year ago
somenameforme|1 year ago
[1] - https://backlinko.com/ad-blockers-users
danaris|1 year ago
There's a huge difference between extremely-high-production-value Superbowl ads and regular TV ads.
There's another huge difference between regular TV ads and some of the ads you can get on YouTube (example: someone I follow decided, For Science™, to actually watch the entirety of a 5-hour ad they got on YouTube for...I think it was one of the Lego Movies? It consisted entirely of an endless repetition of the same 3-minute-ish song).
There's also a huge difference between what people are willing to tolerate in order to reduce some of the often-absurd financial burden they're being put under, and what people actually like, or are genuinely content with.
"Revealed preference" theory is a bunch of motivated reasoning.
barrkel|1 year ago
There are of course other problems, fraud, money laundering and the like, which extract taxes, and and a whole patchwork quilt of national regulations, which extracts a lot more.
Things like crypto look, feel and smell like money laundering. I don't think there's a technical solution here. The problems are social and regulatory.
nertirs1|1 year ago
zild3d|1 year ago
unknown|1 year ago
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