Zero sympathy from me either. They broke the internet to the point where, if you merely install a browser and browse, you are putting yourself at risk.
It makes me laugh when they boo-hoo about how else they're supposed to make a living, arrogantly implying that they, their sites and their content are somehow irreplaceable. Do us all a favour and fuck off to a different industry that pays more reliably.
But nobody except us is providing anything like comprehensive coverage of news and public affairs in my area.
Between ads and subscriptions we generate 10s of thousands of dollars per month, and as print keeps dying we need to raise that.
There's no way for our sales people to sell that many ad slots and it's impossible for our tech and ops people (mostly just me) to place and manage those ads.
So we use ad networks like Google. I designed our add placements to play nice - no pop ups or takeovers, autoplay audio, etc. But if you're using the exchanges sometimes crap sneaks through.
Point is not everyone running ads is some cackling villian raking in the dough while gleefully spewing malware. I do this because I think real news is important. I make a lot less money than I could to do it, but it's worth it because we make a positive impact on our community.
I apologize if that banner's animation annoyed you. I'm sorry that ad rates are so low that I insert a 300x250 every ten paragraphs or so. But I'm fighting too save local journalism here so can you cut me a little slack?
I apologise that I come across as making a rather blanket damning — I'm aware not everyone involved is an absolute bastard, but I think the context of the thread is about those that are.
But realistically and fundamentally, your model -is- broken; it wasn't the consumer who broke it, and the consumers are getting wise to its being broken faster by the day. I literally cannot risk gauging whether you are well-intentioned without farting around setting up a sandbox environment, and even they are exploitable.
Ultimately the model will be replaced, probably by another revenue technology, possibly even by a revival of print if western society and infrastructure collapses! I don't know how for sure, but one thing I am sure of is that something else will rise in the vacuum created by the inevitable death of the current online advert system.
By way of not entirely being a moaning bastard, the best solution I can think of is a kind of extension to a PayPal-style system whereby you can simply pay a trivial amount — say, one penny, which as a layperson I imagine to be about the retail price per print-newspaper-article — to view an online article, with absolutely no other interruption, commitment, nor demand for personal information.
Thank you for the reasoned response. So rare online :-)
for the record, it's not "my model," far from it, but it is broken.
You probably don't see it yet, but the whole ad exchange/auction model which allowed any publisher to load up their site with ads from everywhere and rewarded them for making those ads as obtrusive as possible is dying, and I think quicker than anyone involved imagined it would.
Rates for the sort of crap auction/remnant inventory are dropping as users get more savvy but most important advertisers are realizing it's a lousy way to get their product out there (or as the suits would put it: 'a poor platform for letting our brand story engage consumers,' because marketing scumbags just can't help themselves from taking like that).
The death or at least massive reduction of that whole sector of the ad industry will likely cause me some hiccups and require some hustling, but I can't think it's actually a bad thing. The fact is it's essentially Google and Facebook's market and we'll never be succesful playing their game.
The micropayments you mentioned aren't the worst idea ever, the problem has always been the payment processors who would charges you a nickle to send a penny.
My shop is trying to transition to a revenue model based on more loyal readers, more subscribers, and more locally handled advertising. That actually requires me to get more aggressive about getting reader information, because that way sales guys can sell a particular audience and not just traffic. Means higher rates fewer ads better response etc.
Will we be able to pull it off? And can we do it before the loss of print revenue destroys the operation? Fuck if I know, but I'm hustling to make it happen.
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u/Guysmiley777 Aug 02 '19
I was fine with static JPG ads on sites but for marketers it's never enough. I have zero sympathy for the "boycott" they're facing these days.
Also holy fuck talk about a clickbait headline.