Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Banner Ads in "Free" Software?
Yet ANOTHER Anonymous Coward writes in with
this question, that I'm SURE will generate a
lot of discussion:
"Rumor has it that a major software
development house is considering embedding
banner ads within their software and then
giving the software away for free. The idea
is to apparently generate revenue on the ads.
Could this be the way of the future for
software companies (considering that
software prices are falling and companies
are looking for other ways to make money)?
What do slashdot-goers think of this idea?
Is this SPAM or will people be ok with this
sort of advertising? Feedback is appreciated."
What do you all think?
Using ads to pay for the entire cost of something is a time honored tradition. Many school newspapers and publications use this. In most cities there is at least one free print news publication which is entirely paid for by ads. I say, go for it, let the market decide. (and I firmly believe that there will be a place in the market for this.. there will be people willing to be blitzed with ads to get something for "free"... always)
That said, I've had a taste of open source software, and that has been my taste of delight. I'm not going back.
I recently borrowed a friend's Palm Pilot, and I tried to download some software for it. Just about everything I downloaded, however, was crippleware/annoyware. It was a huge cognative dissonance - here is the Linux system I use every day, with hundreds of thousands of man-hours of work that went into the creation of it, and nobody asked anything more in return than the approval of their fellow geeks. And here's some crappy little Palm Pilot application that probably took some guy a weekend to write, and he expects me to pay him $30 for it, and he won't even let me use the numbers 7, 8 and 9 until I do. Or he'll display some annoying banner for several seconds until I pay.
My reaction at first was "screw this, if I want an application to do foo I'll write my own". My second reaction was "wow, what a different world the DOS/Windows people must live in - everything for money, nothing for love".
It doesn't supprise me that with more DOS/Windows people getting into Unix that the money grubbing weasels with the shitty shareware would be moving in too.
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
If the software is truly free (free speech) and not pseudo free (free beer), then I will have the source code and I can simply remove the banner ads and redistribute my changes.
Of course, I seriously doubt the company would allow that, so it probably wouldn't really be free.
I would consider it commercial software and I seriously doubt I'd use it. But that's just me...
All we're seeing here is another method of companies generating revenue; time will tell just how successful it is. The main problem will be evaluating its usefulness, since one download could equate to 1, 2 or twenty people seeing the ad. In some cases, it might be downloaded, looked at once and deleted, making the ad less than effective.
The big problem with this is the effect it will have on package sizes. A small package with too many ads will be bigger than it should be, but the effect of a small ad in a large package (eg, MS Office) would be less noticable.
--
This big questions is also "Who's ads are they going to be?" and "Is it worth it for them?"
I don't think it's even been proven that banner ads generate money. I know from personal experience that I never clicked on one with the intent on buying something. I also can say probably a vast majority of others haven't either.
Also, I'd assmue the ads would be in the top right corner. Like the Netscape "N" but bigger. How would they even get there? Alot of computers that have people using apps like word processors aren't connected to the internet(at least while they are using the word processor). That would mean the ads would have to be permanently in the app. That's not going to be cheap for the advertisers, and most likely, not worth the money.
And one last thing. Ads have already been in some apps, like AOL Instant Messenger. But these kind of apps are more of the recreational type things that people use when they get home from school/work. When someone opens up Word Perfect, they have a reason to use it, and want to get that work done. They aren't going to be looking at ads and going "that looks interesting, I shoud get one of those". Or even click on it to go to their website. Like I said eariler, a good majority aren't going to even be connected to the internet.
This will be an idea that may be tried, people will see it will fail, and won't be tired again.
I'd have been wrong. For many, many years the entire television industry was supported entirely from advertising revenues. And the advertising did not become steadily more intrusive, starting out as short segments of video played in breaks between the programs and slowly migrating to endorsement by announcers and then to blatant product placement within the shows and other content. Instead, it did the exact opposite: early television shows very often featured the sponsored products within the show, and only later did they begin to separate the advertising and segregate it to brief (all right, not-so-brief) advertisement breaks.
Now, I'm not saying it's perfect -- there's still a certain amount of intermixing between the content and the advertising, and in recent years the entire system has broken down to be replaced by a consumer-funded arrangement where the fees are collected by cable companies [but I still make do with terrible fuzzy reception and limited selection because I am unwilling to pay for a service that I value so little].
So what does this have to do with software?
Basically, I think that banner-ad-funded software and computer services are a wonderful idea. I salute juno and others who pioneer this. I actually think that banner advertisements are a good idea -- rather like comercials on television, they set an expectation that the advertising will occur only within a narrow strip and should not leak out into the editorial content. Yes, they DO leak out, but when it happens, people get upset, and as long as that expectation is there it may hold things together for a while.
As for the software, I think that "Free" software (as in Linux... free for anyone to use, extend, develop, etc) is a great idea. But not all software will be done that way -- not now, and probably not ever. I also think that "Inexpensive" software (as in Linux, but also as in Netscape and Explorer, and even a lot of shareware out there that charges reasonable prices) is a great idea. Some of the software that is not "Free" may be "Inexpensive", and that would be a good thing. If banner advertisements can help make this possible, by paying the salaries of those who develop and market inexpensive software, that's a great thing.
Most of the time, I will ignore the ads -- it's really not difficult to do, they're certainly not as intrusive as, say, email ads. But sometimes -- particularly if the product being advertised intrigues me -- I will click on that ad, and go check it out. I will do this consciously and intentionally, for two reasons: first, because I'm interested in the product, and secondly because I know that when I do so, I'm also helping to support this nice, cheap, software that I obviously appreciate (else, why would I be using it). This is the same attitude I take with web sites (yes, this means that I check out the banner ads at /. from time to time), and if enough other people have the same attitude, then perhaps my initial instinct is wrong. Perhaps is is possible for (some) of the software industry to be (partially) funded through banner ads. It would be nice.
Isn't this already done by the ICQ/AIM clients? Of course, this sort of advertising would work especially well with Net-aware apps (softupdate!)
:-)
But hey, if it's closed-source, there's still work to do anyway, ah? What would be funny is if a software house decided to release an app under OSS, and threw ad blurbs all over the source code. (How about that for targetting a technically literate market segment?
iSKUNK!
Choice is good. As long as I get the option to buy the same piece of software without the ads, I have no problems. Such programs will probably make good demos.
I don't think the idea is going to fly, though, for the following reasons:
(1) To target the ads the software will have to be intrusive. It'll be interested in your household income and whether you subscribe to Hustler. Obvious problems here.
(2) The ads have to be updated, so the software will demand a semi-permanent connection to the Net. It's going to be a hassle for modem users. Besides, it's going to take a lot of trust before I allow a program with a vested interest in my identity and habits to freely communicate with outside.
(3) Hacking the programs to be ad-free (or display something more fun) will become the favorite pasttime for all teenage hackers. Anybody remember the disk-protection schemes from the late eighties? Guess who won the war?
To summarize: I think the idea sucks, but I'll be perfectly happy to watch it crash and burn.
Kaa
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
Basically, whatever you get, you pay for it one way or another.
...
In this case, the user will have to pay for the software with her time. Banners are only the beginning. I'm waiting for fully commercialized give-away software like wordprocessors, which will insert a 5 minutes commercial break every 12 minutes, databases, which ask the user to enter every 1000 records some brand name to 're-energize', drawing programs, which add to every file the face of some politico candidate (including random slogan),
Two, three years ago, banners on webpages were a novelty and today pages without them are becoming rare. In the same time, as advertizer start to measure the impact of their banner ads, prices for banners are coming down rapidly. Except for really popular pages, the average web site will earn less and less.
Exactly the same will happen to banners in programs. In the beginning, everyone will sell its desktop space, but sooner or later, it will probably not even be worth it for small companies.
One: Apple introduced banner ads into its operating system with the launch of Mac OS 8. The Sherlock search function displays ad banners when conducting an Internet search. This was to placate the owners of the search engines that Sherlock uses so that Yahoo, Excite, etc. wouldn't lose out on revenue that would have been generated from the hordes of Mac users who could suddenly by-pass their gold mine. I'm not sure if the money from those ads is split between Apple and the search engine(s) or if it goes to the engines exclusively.
Additionally, you can search various web sites through Sherlock plug-ins, so I guess those ads would also be shown for sites such as MacOSRumors.
Two: I used to work for a major entertainment website who realied heavily on ads and sponsorships to be profitable. Over the past two years, the number of ads that ran continued to increase, while the cost per ad continued to decrease at the same rate. This meant sponsorships were needed to maintain the revenue stream. Increasingly content was created to match sponsorship opportunities and was plastered with the sponsor's logo wherever possible. Because this leads to less-than-enticing content, the number of visits is likely to drop, further damaging the ad revenue tally and making it more difficult to attract more sponsors.
Ok, lets analyze things a bit. Facts are as follows: (1) Lots of people can write cool software, and would like to make a living doing it, but can't because they lack capital, marketing, etc. (2) Shareware is beautiful in theory but doesn't work. Not enough people register shareware to make it profitable. (3) People like shareware and freeware, but don't like paying for it or don't go through the hassle to pay for it.
Ads are the logical answer. We may well see a day when it is more profitable to give software away than to sell it. The beauty of this is that if you want to register the shareware, you can turn the ads off. If you don't, then you still support the developers.
The reason I am familiar with this is that I work at NetJumper, which is coming out with its own SDK next month. We are creating a network of developers who will get advertising revenue. Our developers range from large, international companies to a college student who has written a cool game editor. ALL ARE ON EQUAL FOOTING HERE! If you write good software, you can now make money by joining our network. It's that simple.
Pure libertarian.
This idea has already been in existance for two years now. Check out http://adnet.aureate.com/.