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Snapchat Will Introduce Ads, Attempt To Keep Them Other Than Creepy
As reported by VentureBeat, dissapearing-message service Snapchat is introducing ads. Considering how most people feel about ads, they're trying to ease them in gently: "Ads can be ignored: Users will not be required to watch them. If you do view an ad, or if you ignore it for 24 hours, it will disappear just like Stories do." Hard to say how much it will mollify the service's users, but the company says "We won’t put advertisements in your personal communication – things like Snaps or Chats. That would be totally rude. We want to see if we can deliver an experience that’s fun and informative, the way ads used to be, before they got creepy and targeted."
That's how it always starts. In a few years, more ads than content.
You are not the customer. You are the product.
All of the nope.
Show me ads, I block them or go elsewhere.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
To do targeted advertising, you have to collect data about people, say by processing the messages that have accumulated in their mailboxes over time. In this case though, SnapChat *CANT* do that - by definition - messages aren't supposed to lie around, they vanish when they are read. So the inability to deliver targeted ads is a fundamental shortcoming of the service.
It's amazing how they're trying to market it like they're doing this out of the goodness of their hearts. That's just... creepy.
How did I miss this halcyon era when Internet ads were "fun and informative"?
Handful of friends and I use snapchat mainly to send stupid shit to each other. It's kinda fun, but none of us are really using it to chat or anything.
I might have considered paying a buck or two for the app (we've had some fun with it), but deal with ads, fuck that shit. The stupid random "live from Oktoberfest" shit that's been showing up lately is annoying enough.
I always wondered how they intended to fund/make money from this. I was kinda hoping for something more creative than "once it's popular, we'll show ads!".
Well on the way to monetize eh? Go get those eyeballs. I heard they have 35 employees. Thats an amazing ratio, 10B for 35. GPRO a week or so ago was 11B for 350. BRCM is 21B for 11300. Makes you wonder...
It is like boiling a frog. Intrusive ads might drive users away onto a competing platform, and since there isn't anything much to the technology they need to preserve their user base. At the same time they have to monetize. This intermediate solution is to slowly ramp up revenue, we'll get to the creepy targeted ads sooner rather than later...
they're trying to ease them in gently
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I just don't understand how people that are a little bit tech savvy cope with ads. The first things I do on a new computer (mine or a relative/friend)is:
- install Adblock Plus on all the browsers that support it;
- tweak the host file to block know ads/malware domains
I haven't seen an ad in years, the web feels so quiet when you browse like that, without popups, flashes, animations, everyone crying for your attention...
Android? Rooted smartphone/tablet? No problem! Here is AdAway, basically tweaking the hosts file on the Android Linux, the same way that you do on a Windows PC.
Apple still eludes me, as my only iOS device, an iPad2 is not jailbroken, so I don't really know what's out there for it, so I still see lots of ads when browsing with it... Maybe that's the reason it's the device I do the least browsing with..
"A sysadmin is a cross between a detective, a police officer, a gardener, a doctor and a fireman"
The Snapchat team are really regretting that they were too prideful to take a $3B buyout. Now they get to enjoy the quick, flaming descent into being penniless refugees from a failed startup.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
What part of that reality doesn't snapchat get?
Your spam annoys me.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Wait... ads can be ignored? When did this happen?!
It's pure klunky bullshit and unoriginal brute force and it's always outdated.
Go with elegance ... go with Adblock.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Yeah, I've posted to the wrong article, too.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Your spam actually wok against you.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
I field questions about using the hosts file service and use this post as justification to say, "No."
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Huh? What video ads?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
A hosts file ain't no firewall...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Huh? What video ads?
I'm with you... and I'm also still wondering what that "Disable Advertising" check box near the top right corner of each page is all about...
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
Micro payments would need to GENERATE few dollars per day for site owners. That doesn't say anything about what they COST. If I fill out a payment form to pay 10 cents for a howto, that generates 10 cents for the bank and site to split, but it costs a few minutes. The typical Slashdot reader probably sells their time at over $1/minute, so it costs ten times as much as the site owner gets.
Sure there is no law of physics that says it must cost a lot, but if spammers send millions of emails hoping for an average profit of $0.000001 per email, how many millions of fraudulent micropayments would they submit to be paid two cents apiece? The system has to be robust against sophisticated fraud in order to survive, and that will cost users time and the security will cost a lot of money.
On the other hand, if we can come up with a system that keeps the transactional, security, and convenience costs below 50%, we can become billionaires. A company that could do that would be a thousand times larger than PayPal. I did know one guy who ran a successful system like that years ago, and it made him quite wealthy. The key in his case was that he had client web sites that were part of a group that customers would purchase as a package deal. Suppose that for $25 / year, you got no ads and special perks on :
Slashdot
Cnet
SourceForge
Github
Stackexchange
Lots of Maker sites
And 800 other tech / nerd sites.
That might be worth taking a couple of minutes to sign up (and the transaction fee the merchant pays for credit card processing). All the sites could sell subscriptions and receive a cut of the revenue. If 10% of nerds paid each paid $25, that would be a lot of money to split between the participating sites. That's generally how the successful one worked, covering a certain niche.
I think this is what makes Bitcoin and Dogecoin and the other cryptocurrencies so interesting.
There is hardly any overhead in paying people, it's fast.
It's like paying a street performer with cash.
New things are always on the horizon
If you're trying to make some kind of point here, I'd suggest starting with learning how to communicate in English.