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The Billions In Mobile Ad Money Nobody Can Grab
jfruh writes "Here's a pressing mystery: despite users spending an increasing amount on their mobile phones, mobiile advertising only produces 20% of the revenues per page that web advertising does. This seems like a big opportunity for somebody, but a whole complex of reasons might mean that it isn't just a matter of someone being smart enough to do mobile ads right. The whole advertising industry, which in many ways still resembles the Mad Men-era old boy's network, simply may not be equipped to cope."
The screen real-estate on a mobile device is too tight for an add to be non-intrusive and simply piss people off. Annoyed customers are not paying customers.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Be honest those of you who have a smart phone, when is the last time you saw an ad on it and seriously thought about even clicking it, much less spending money on what was shown?
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
The real mystery is why CPM = cost per thousand not cost per million.
As for why costs on mobile are cheaper, I think it boils down to "cell phone is for 99 cent apps and desktop is for $1000 autocad installations". Its just not a serious marketplace. Also desktops are for work so a message can be snuck in while defenses are down, but phones are for getting voice spammed and text spammed so people are very used to ignoring messages from a phone.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Acceptable Mobile Ads: Takes up the edge of the screen (or otherwise unused area), is not distracting (flashing, music, etc) and is primarily on pages/screens that I'm not going to spend a lot of time on, such as title screens, login screens, etc
The more an ad looks like content (as opposed to "attention grabbing", the more likely I am to pay attention to it. The more likely I am to pay attention to it, the more likely I am to click it if I'm interested. If your ad flashes yellow flying monkeys and blares music then I'm going to ignore it even if it's something I may be interested in. The advertising industry has taught us to tune out the annoying ads completely. Also, if an app has an ad splash screen (especially one that cannot be skipped), I will stop using that app altogether regardless of how well done, relevant, etc the ad itself is.
I saw an ad once that interested me, but I didn't click on it simply because it would have exited the app I was in and switched to a web browser. If my phone had the equivalent of a taskbar that allows you to quickly and easily switch between open programs, then I probably would have clicked it. Of course, that was one ad in the seven months I've owned a smartphone.
Mobile browsers and apps will start delivering ads embedded in the app, page ads will go the way of the Dino.
Advertising isn't always about getting you to buy a product then and there. While that's nice, it can be much more subtle than that. For instance I've never seen a TV ad for mouth wash and rushed out to the store right after to buy some. But the next time I did actually want to buy mouthwash, I went to the grocery store and was confronted with about half a dozen brands. Which one do I buy? Well, probably the one that is more familiar to me, the one I have seen advertised the most.
I'm just glad that Da Vinci, Einstein, Tesla, Graham Bell and other inventors didn't have the submitter's "oh, this is too hard" mindset.
My own theory is that the whole "personalized ads" concept is bullshit, at least when it's taken as far as it is now.
Someone who knows me EXACTLY (which seems to be what they're trying to do) would recommend to me pretty much just the things I already buy, and would buy anyways. I don't think I've *ever* clicked on an ad and bought what they were selling. Even if they could read my mind, all they would really be doing is giving me the link I'd be clicking on in a few seconds *anyways*.
In fact, it seems to do the exact opposite. I bought an SSD recently, and ever since my GMail has been showing nothing but ads for SSDs. Way to completely miss your chance - I probably won't need another for months, at the earliest. Or when I bought a laptop, for the next few weeks it was showing ads for Alienware laptops.
And then sometimes it gets things just completely, absolutely wrong. I swear that at one point, my Droid was *convinced* that I was a gay black man with AIDS. Wrong on all counts save that yes, I am male. I don't even know how it came up with that - there is literally nothing I've done that would support that idea. Needless to say, the "gay thug dating" and "HIV testing" ads had a zero chance of getting money from me (although it did get quite a few laughs).
So maybe the problem is that the entire framework of economic/advertising theories they're working on are *wrong*. Like when all the physicists' theories about the luminiferous ether had to be thrown out when it was demonstrated that no such thing existed. I would not be surprised if, decades from now, we look back at all this tracking and personalized advertising the way we currently look back at the "radiation" fad of the 50's - a lot of really bad ideas that we now know are completely wrong.
What exactly is the difference between freemium and shareware? Did they just change the term over the last decade or so for marketing purposes?
I just dont "surf" enough on my phone, as it is too slow. The connection is not that fast, even at "4g", and the processor in there doesnt really do much for me. If I am browsing something on the phone, it is very specific. I rarely find myself simply killing time browsing on the phone, let alone following links. I am far too impatient.
Until the data speeds are consistent I will only be willing to consider an ad from something on wifi or better.
Mobile ads are very effective at clickthrough. With touch interfaces, it's far too easy to accidentally touch an ad that appears right next to something useful.
I have never seen an ad on the web and seriously thought about clicking it, much less spending money on what was shown. Somehow web ads still seem to be profitable.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
for a while the theory was that if people always check in and post what they are buying and where then their friends will do the same. right up to the time when people got sick of "checking in" and people got sick of their facebook streams polluted by crap
why can't phone makers spend the 5 or 10 cents to enable HDTV and FM radio or even AM radio on their devices?
It seems like a great sales point, so I wondered why no smart phone does this.
Is it because the business guys are trying to extort some sort of fee from the broadcasters for this ability?
because that's how you deliver ads to phones: FM radio and TV
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Have you seen the ads? Mind you, I haven't in awhile, as I tend to use whatever ad blocking software I can find, but I seem to recall them being dominated by dating networks, gambling sites, and more ad-filled crapware written by the same people that brought you the current ad-filled crapware.
But the next time I did actually want to buy mouthwash, I went to the grocery store and was confronted with about half a dozen brands. Which one do I buy? Well, probably the one that is more familiar to me, the one I have seen advertised the most.
This is a poor heuristic to use. Chances are, if they have to spend on marketing, they're not delivering the best product for the best price. When presented with a choice of products and no further information, choose the one for which you don't remember seeing advertising.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Android has a task bar type thing. When you hold the "Home" button for 3 seconds it brings up you most recent applications. Tapping on an application pulls it's most recent state from the stack and restores it exactly as you left it.
--Sparksis
One thing could potentially be quantified: what proportion of online spending is made from a mobile device? Of course, that doesn't account for brand advertising, where the goal is just to make your logo more familiar to people, as opposed to actually convert a sale. But it would be somewhere to start, by telling us whether, at least in conversion-focused advertising, mobile advertising is under- or over-performing relative to the amount of commerce that takes place on the platform.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
So always by the generic store brand?
There's the screen real estate problem, of course. More important, though, is the business model. Phones are sold to carriers. They make their money from service charges. They don't need ads. They'd rather have paid services be paid for through them.
If screen real-estate was truely the issue, people would have stayed on their desktops/laptops. The problem with mobile browsing is the publishers constant desire to force-feed a "mobile version" of their website to end-users. Most mobile versions suck pretty bad and they are not typically intuitive. When on a mobile version, I don't click on ads. Why would I bother when i'll just be taken to another crappy stripped down mobile version. However, after installing the dolphine browser and getting a normal looking web page back, I click on ads frequently if they interest me. To summarize, if you want mobile users to click on ads as much as desktop users, then give them a desktop experience.
Let's make like a bird... and get the flock outta here.
I would have bought the generic one, since it costs usually about 30% less than a brand name that spent that 30% on useless advertising. But that's just me.
Moo.
...Chances are, if they have to spend on marketing, they're not delivering the best product for the best price. When presented with a choice of products and no further information, choose the one for which you don't remember seeing advertising.
Which is why marketroids spend tons of money to develop ads that nobody "remembers", but stay in the periphery of your consciousness. Also works for politicians.
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
"The whole advertising industry, which in many ways still resembles the Mad Men-era old boy's network, simply may not be equipped to cope."
Or vagina.
Because the store's brand is always the highest quality.
Okay, so desktops get x clicks/1000 views, and because mobile devices get 0.2(x)/1000 views I'm supposed to believe that there is money there waiting to be grabbed?
Bullshit.
The use patterns on phones and tablets is fundamentally different than on a desktop. There is absolutely no reason to assume that the advertising done (no matter how) will provide the same results.
note: I'm not attempting to state that the money definitively isn't there, but comparing clicks between two completely different formats is hardly proof that there is.
The only place I see ads is my mobile phone
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Because the store's brand is always the highest quality.
It may well be an almost identical product from the same Chinese factory in a different box...
All those eyeballs not seeing ads, and depriving poor Corporations of their rightful profits. Oh, the inhumanity of it all!
Won't somebody please think of the Corporations?
That's why he said pick the product that you don't remember. Stand in front of the options, and if you see one that seems like the obvious choice but don't know why, buy a different one: it usually means that you recognise them from some advertising.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
No, but it's worth trying first. Store brands are almost always of sufficient quality that it doesn't make economic sense to pay more for a marginal increase in quality. And a lot of the quality that people assign to name brands only exists in their heads. You tend to like what you're used to. If you get in the habit of trying generics often, you don't get used to more expensive brands that aren't actually any better.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I'm on Android. It has nothing remotely as easy to use as the taskbar. If it requires installing an additional app, then I'm probably not going to use it given the extreme space and processor constraints on my phone.
The whole ad industry and it's suppliers (Google, FB etc) are run by marketers. The fundamental theory that drives marketing is that the more you advertise, the better you sell (up to a point of marginal returns). No one has seriously looked at this approach to marketing in a long time. The result is that the billions spent on TV/Radio/Newspaper are moving to online advertising. While online advertising offers improved feedback, it basically is push advertising - shoving something in front of you in the hope that you will bite. Well, think for yourself, does that work for you? I, mostly, am supremely annoyed by push ads and I think the age of push ads will quickly die. In the future, marketers will have to engage more personally with buyers and require more humans to interact with buyers to form some sort of trust. The age of holding (and hiding behind) a big megaphone and blasting your message will quickly come to an end.
You just made my phone about 12 times more useful. Here's hoping it works on my Nook Color dual-booted to Cyanogenmod, going to try it when I get home.
I will begin by positing the following: That it's pretty obvious that the less removed the advertisee is from the product, the more impulse-driven the advertising becomes.
This is clearly illustrated in the following:
-TV commercials (most removed) that try to get you to remember a name for the next time you need to say, buy life insurance.
-Internet ads (on a PC, getting warmer) that want you to click and enter some CC info while distracting you from what you were doing.
-Targeted internet ads (such as from a store that already has your info suggesting other products) where you can basically "one-click" your way to poverty.
-Finally product labels (in a store, knowing you already are there, in that aisle, for the purpose of buying a product) which try to out-shine the next guy with colors and swooping patterns.
And there's clearly a well-established economics set up for the last two, considering the click-through payments that online retailers will give to advertising partners, as well as grocery stores putting their own generic brand in some of the most visible spots next to well-known brands.
Now we take a look at mobile devices and what do we see?
As far as immediacy goes, they rest somewhere between generic internet ads and the more targeted ads. But why is there such a price parity?
Think about filling out a full billing or credit card address form, one letter at a time, with hilarious auto-correct.
Think about punching your full credit card info into any mobile app.
And finally, keep in mind that certain products (iTunes) which do offer features (all payment info stored centrally) to exploit such impulsiveness tend to do fairly well revenue wise.
If you think about the two bolded concepts of immediacy and impulsiveness, it's pretty easy to see that the issue of the mobile space is not so much that it's an "old-boy's" network with a failure to adapt, but that a lack (even if perceived) of any trustworthy impulsive payment method is what moves its effectiveness as an advertising channel from that of click-to-buy to something more comparable to a TV jingle.
To write a summary about the failure of mobile ads based on an analysis epitomized by a fucking TV show on the other hand, makes it seem that the whole ITWorld crew in many ways still resembles the Mad Men-era old boy's network, and simply may not be equipped to cope. ;)
I think those billions in potential ad revenue are currently hidden in the same account with the unrealized potential profits of the *AA recording companies.
The point of the ads is to encourage you to shell out a dollar or two for the premium version of the app... in my experience anyway.
One thing I know, and that is that I am ignorant...
Mod this up! This is precisely my operating plan -- particularly in terms of financial services like banks and insurance. Expressly stay away from anyone advertising on TV (the more, the worse).
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Chances are, if they have to spend on marketing, they're not delivering the best product for the best price.
Every product needs marketing. Being the best product at the best price is not enough. Look at Linux, best product for the best price according to many, and still no one uses it. The marketplace isn't about a feature/price ratio that everyone calculates in their head and then goes with the best one. People make decisions to alleviate problems in their life, problems that are either emotional or physical. Marketing speaks to these problems and whichever product speaks to you best wins your money. Even the color of the packaging plays a major role in speaking to your subconscious. Hell, sometimes marketing even goes so far as to convince you that you have a problem you really don't have. All these factors play into which product you choose.
Human beings are emotional creatures, and as much as you might insist you are completely rational and pragmatic in your decisions and they are 100% ruled by a fact-based comparisons of feature charts and price per unit comparisons, I'm willing to bet you are swayed by marketing to some degree regardless.
which in many ways still resembles the Mad Men-era old boy's network, simply may not be equipped to cope."
Citation please. Everyone I know working in advertising or even anywhere near it is obsessed with quantifying, measuring, targeting, and tailoring. Most of that is at least as high tech as developing any other kind of web application. I think they are "up to the challenge," and trust me I really wish they weren't.
There are probably a good number of Don Drapper like dinosaurs still roaming the halls of ad agencies; possibly especially in "creative" but most of the industry is pretty scientific now and has been for quite some time.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Ads on my phone, and on my computers, are blocked.
it's a free channel(s). it's cheap to add the hardware. it would appeal to consumers
it's so brain dead obvious i want to know the reason why no manufacturer/ provider offers it
none of your complaints are good reasons, they are rather contrived and personal only to you
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I'm on mailing lists for about a dozen major vendors, such as NewEgg. I keep an eye out for sales and specials on products I need, and then I grab them when I see them. (Like 8 gigs of RAM for $50.) Since I get these through my email, I do get them via my mobile phone. The actual ads that occasionally pop up on my phone courtesy of my carrier are all for crap like University of Phoenix or Zynga games.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
good info
hello, north american providers:
what gives? such a cheap easy offering, such obvious appeal to consumers
are we really talking about a cheap easy hardware setup not allowed simply because you assholes can't monetize it?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Even if I actually wanted to see the ad, I would have lost interest at this point.
Bottles.
Look at Linux
This is a great example. If I paid attention to marketing, I'd be using some inferior product.
Hell, sometimes marketing even goes so far as to convince you that you have a problem you really don't have.
All the more reason to do the opposite of what marketing tells me to do.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Depends on the application, and the device.
On my OG Droid, for instance, there's an excellent chance that switching from $randomapp to $randombrowser, doing some browsing, and then switching back is going to fail at resurrecting $randomapp's state due to RAM starvation issues.
Now, sure: In a perfect world where RAM is unlimited and programmers know what they're doing, this all works fine, every time.
But that's the same mythological world where pulleys are frictionless, rope doesn't stretch, love is free, and unicorns are real.
Kid-proof tablet..
Rather than argue with your assumptions, I will simply compliment you on having more coherent english skills than most native speakers who blame natural disasters on HAARP.
Well done Spaniard.
Not to usurp the anonymous coward who gave out the same info for Android, but this really needs to be heard. I myself didn't learn about it until an ICS beta.
Android: Press and hold Home for 3 sec. That'll pop up a list of running apps. Click one to switch to it. Flick it to close it (handy for closing a bunch of apps at once). Be aware that Android auto-closes apps when it runs out of memory, so if you haven't used the app in a while and are running a lot of other stuff, it may close on its own while in the background.
iOS: Double-click the home button. That'll pop up a list of apps much like Android. I hear it's a list of recently used apps, rather than a list of currently running apps. But I don't know enough about iOS multitasking to say for sure.
Advertising is unwanted, and intended to mislead. It is especially obnoxious on a platform that costs a lot of money and has a small screen. Phones and plans are expensive and then on top of that you tell people they are going to see ads? They're not going to be happy. I especially hate efforts to spy on me in order to increase the effectiveness of ads that I don't want to see for products I don't want.
Moreover, I find *ALL* advertising to be annoying and unwanted, the more custom tailored it is to me the more offensive I find it. Also, advertising seems to operate under the assumption that people have money to spend. Tell me, how is an advertising based economy going to work when every year more and more people are unemployed? I don't care how targeted and relevant your ads are, people without jobs aren't going to buy your product/service.
The advertising economy is headed for a huge crash, and mobile is just an especially obvious example. It's a scam, top to bottom.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
As often as I click on any other ad, which is never.
Advertising is offensive (the concept of advertising, irrespective of the content) to me and I go out of my way to block it and avoid it wherever and whenever possible.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
We pay for (x) minutes, (y) text msgs, and (z) bandwidth per month for our mobile devices. Ads consume those resources so we effectively pay for those ads. That's not what mobile customers signed up for.
It's the same reason that the feds banned unsolicited ads to fax machines and business phones - the end receiver pays for the transmission.
It would be a big inconvenience if I got an incoming call signal while talking to a human and only find out it is an ad.
This is beyond just annoying.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
Then it's not a smartphone. Even my old Nokia with Symbian 60 had task switching. RTFM
I have 3 mobile phones with me every day and I end up happier because of it. At times I have two of them up to my head at a time. IT's great. the waves of euphoria I get from the 2.4ghz and 900mhz radiation is pure bliss. I went as far as calling numbers where I am put on hold for extended periods of time so that I can be on the phone.
I just hope that someone can find a way for me to have all three phones in use at the same time....
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I bought the type of mouthwash that my dentist told me to buy. He said to buy ACT, or a generic equivalent as long as the active ingredients were the same. I've never seen an ad for ACT anywhere. If I did I'd probably stop buying it. Now, maybe they advertised to my dentist and got him to recommend it, but I doubt it.
There are a lot of people like me who consider advertising to be an insult to our intelligence and free will. Advertising isn't meant to inform, it's meant to deceive in a way that goes right up to that line of lying -- but in theory not cross it. They often do cross the line into outright lies, and then our legal system has to kick in. It's a huge waste of human effort and time all around.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
I usually do because it's usually cheaper.
Then it's not a smartphone. Even my old Nokia with Symbian 60 had task switching. RTFM
If he only needs to task-switch to read an ad that appears in another app . . . ? I'd guess that if he'd wanted to do it for a truly useful (to him) purpose, he would have been willing to put that kind of effort in it. But if seeing an ad reqires TFM?
I am not a crackpot.
Nobody wants them and never did - the industry just fooled itself for decades.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Make people pay for ads.
Make people watch video on a 5" screen and listen to music on crap earbuds.
Do not make it easy to block unwanted calls and spam voice messages.
Profit!!
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
I use Firefox and AdBlock Plus on my desktop, the instant my cel carrier lets an ad through to my phone I'm switching and daring them to sue me for any "termination fees". I've already notified them of this. I do not allow advertising in my home, circumventing my reasonable efforts to prevent ads in my residence constitutes trespassing by law. I consider my phone to be equally protected wherever I go, and I'm confident the courts would agree.
War as we knew it was obsolete
Nothing could beat complete denial
- Emily Haines
Marketing is not simple, nor is it straightforward, nor would an engineer be able to grasp delicate concepts like how people work - if you could, you'd be making 5x as much money, working 0.2x as hard as a consultant. You are not a representative sample of the population :)
Nice sidelong insult there!
There are quite a lot of engineers who grasp these delicate concepts quite well, thanks. But you are correct, engineers are not a representative sample of the population. Neither are advertisers.
For me, personally and not representing the general population, ads actively degrade everything they get attached to, and the fewer of them and less targeted they are, the happier I am.
Speaking frankly?
I got so annoyed with the ADs in Angry Birds jeopardizing my gaming experience (you just can't see what's happening whens a AD pops up! A little transparency, please?) that I stopped playing Angry Birds on my mobile.
And, so, I don'y get annoyed anymore with that ads.
And, so, I'm not anymore a potential customer of anything Angry Birds promotes. =]
Lisias@Earth.SolarSystem.OrionArm.MilkyWay.Local.Virgo.Universe.org
Good tip. Another problem is that browsing is slow. Mobile devices have a single full-screen app, so it's not possible to load the add in a separate window or in a background tab. To make things worse, browsing is slower than on a desktop. Even if the connection is fast, the CPU has to load up the browser and render the ad page, this easily takes 20 seconds. If the page is particularly complex or flash-heavy, the original app will be terminated, and has to be reloaded when switching back. So you lose about a minute on looking at the ad, 30 seconds of which is spent waiting, unable to do anything (you can look at the birds if you're outside, maybe). If mobile devices became 20 times faster (well, 20 times compared to my Nexus S, maybe 10 times compared to more modern stuff), I reckon more people would click ads in mobile apps.
Even if the connection is fast, the CPU has to load up the browser and render the ad page, this easily takes 20 seconds.
Sorry, I exaggerated. It takes 10-15 sec to load a couple of ads I tried. Still too long, though.
iOS: Double-click the home button. That'll pop up a list of apps much like Android. I hear it's a list of recently used apps, rather than a list of currently running apps. But I don't know enough about iOS multitasking to say for sure.
It's recently used apps, chronologically from when you last launched them. iOS will try to keep some of them running, but older devices probably won't be able to handle more than 1-3 things at a time before silently killing older processes. However, that list stays populated, so non-savvy users may not notice that the process ever ended, depending on how the app handles startup.
Also, iPads can support multitasking gestures; five finger slide up brings the task bar up, five-finger left or right to switch between apps, and five-finger pinch to close (same as tapping the home button). One of my favorite features for using the iPad because of how futuristic it feels/lazy it is. Added benefit; once the device is out of a lock mode, I can use it completely silently without disturbing my sleeping girlfriend beside me (the home button clicks are loud when there's no background noise).
All the more reason to do the opposite of what marketing tells me to do.
You realize that if large enough quantities of people began to do this, marketers would catch on and take advantage of that, right?
Yes, the predator-prey relationship is constantly evolving.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Perhaps so, but for me, app ads have simply taught me to never use free apps.
Thank you for this!
My router will only hold 50 sites, and I'd rather use a HOSTS file.
Yes I will do this feat.
Appreciated.
Advertising isn't meant to inform, it's meant to deceive in a way that goes right up to that line of lying -- but in theory not cross it. They often do cross the line into outright lies, and then our legal system has to kick in.
Yes, it's hard for ads to lie. But the sine qua non of advertising is to speak less than the whole truth. An ad is not going to tell you if there's a better deal than the one being offered.
So to choose wisely you either have to look at ads for a variety of options (including ads that aren't pushed to you, like product websites), or pay someone to help you. Pushed advertising is counting on us being too lazy, busy, or tight to do either.
I believe you must be an employee either private or in the government (university?) sector.
Let's say you were an entrepreneur. You had just created an awesome, geeky device, perhaps influenced by Nikola Tesla's technology. If it were any good, you'd want to tell the world about it, no?
Well, you can either go to something like Hyde Park, and tell people about it (literally). Or you can buy space in someone's magazine/newspaper/TV program and reach many more people. That's advertising.
Saying advertising is evil is like saying speaking is evil or writing is evil.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
"The whole advertising industry [...] simply may not be equipped to cope."
My heart fucking bleeds for these worthless parasites.
When was the last time you clicked on a Superbowl TV ad to buy a Pepsi? I guess those ads are all irrelevant.
You are partially right - but I can tell you here and now that advertising does indeed fill a role. Scenario - I have cable. A very close friend of mine does not - all he does is download his TV, ad-free. He's always going on about how great it is. Except for the fact that HE NEVER HAS A CLUE WHAT IS GOING ON.. he is constantly paying more for things since he doesn't know about sales, and he is always ignorant about new novel products on the market that I have to inform him on - things that he actually would probably want. There have been times where I had to tell him about a product that came out 8 months ago and was marketed to the 9s, because he never heard of it.