But if I'm already paying for the service (in this case, the airline ticket) why are you trying to show me ads? This makes absolutely zero sense
If a customer is using an ad blocker, and they're on your site spending money, then they got to your site without you having to pay anyone for their traffic. They're already higher margin than a customer who you'll have to pay a conversion fee for if they make an attributable purchase on your site.
Wizz Air’s explanation smells like bs.
So instead of getting a bot detection script they rolled their own solution.
Why am I giving them the benefit of a doubt here, because it doesn't really make sense for an airline to want to punish ad blockers.
While not wrong explicitly, I think that most ad blockers I’ve used are very generous in what they block, incl trackers and other monitoring scripts. In this case, I think it’s reasonable to assume that the statement is true, that blocking or otherwise interfering is messing up bot detection. That said, they could be intentionally misleading in that they are trying to bill ad blockers not bots but don’t want to say it for PR. Especially considering others have said they run a captcha already.
Personally I find ads on company/commercial websites make the company look very cheap and untrustworthy.
But I'm guessing your purchase of an airline ticket, means that hotels, car rentals and other ads for things in the city you're visiting are far more effective, clickable and profitable.
Hotel affiliate schemes can pay anything from 2-15%. You don't need many of those for hundred dollar hotel bookings to make it more profitable than the actual flight alone.
Which WizzAir is. They reschedule or cancel flights all the time, mentioned that you needed a negative covid test during the pandemic and requested a PCR test for boarding, they charge for seats and monetize just about everything. During the flight there's a frenzy of commecrial activity which reminds me of Moroccan bazaars.
Perhaps they are banking on this information becoming public knowledge, so it can become a signal? :)
Very few companies have the analytics maturity to use A/B testing in production to prove your hand-waving assertion without the effect failing sensitivity checks. And by very few, I point to the ones that hire economists and eocnonetricians en masse as having an inkling and trying to work this out in the ad tech space.
As the saying goes, what is asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence. You rag on people for doing "qualitative handwaving" and "armchair speculation", yet you make the claim of "There is no way an adblocker accurately identifies price sensitivity" with nothing but "qualitative handwaving" and "armchair speculation".
>Is that enough justification to pend off eventual discrimination lawsuits? I personally doubt it.
Obviously nothing can fend off "eventual discrimination lawsuits", because anyone can sue for any reason. That said, I find it really a reach to say that discriminating based on ad-blocker status would be construed as discrimination against a protected class in a court of law.
> Very few companies have the analytics maturity to use A/B testing in production to prove your hand-waving assertion without the effect failing sensitivity checks.
Right, that's why I said it was plausible, not that it was a rigorously proven theory.
The point isn't (just) to avoid air travel, also to avoid those shitty Ryanair/WizzAir/Easyjet seats/travels ;)
I used to travel between Amsterdam and Lyon, the KLM flight was so much better than Easyjet, in every respect. I didn't have a lot of money, but that splurge on KLM was worth it.
Also, business and holiday travel where I'd seek the easiest wins in terms of just not flying.
Recently Wizz bought new Airbus 321 neo jets and operate quite cost competitive flights to Spanish islands, so we decided to put up with their crap for the time being.
To my knowledge, there’s different systems that are collecting this kind of information and then driving highly targeted marketing based on that.
However, I wouldn't be so sure that £10 per user isn't the actual value of the ad impressions and data. Users who would pay to opt out of ads aren't a random sample. They're adblock using airline ticket buyers who paid for some sort of premium experience. Could easily be a premium segment.
Advertising is valuable, and that value isn't evenly distributed at all.
The point isn’t getting info, it’s up selling in the moment.
People who can afford to pay to avoid seeing advertisements are more valuable to advertisers because they have more money.
“We ask that you pay attention to the security presentation - which conveniently is now bookended by ads that of course cannot be skipped and since audio comes out of the plane’s PA, everybody has to put up with”.
More due to cost than regulation --- painting a plane is not cheap. Hence why their name (which of course doesn't change often if at all) and the mandatory information like registration ID is usually all they have.
Me blocking ads should make flights less cheap for everybody, not more expensive only for me.
Ads are not part of the deal when I am buying flight tickets.
Unless they can prove me blocking ads costed them 10 pounds and I have accepted those terms.
All the products/services are Ryanair branded mind but it's still quite full-on.
what you call ads it's actually called upselling.
I can buy none of those items and the price of the ticket will not increase.
I do not travel Ryanair because I cannot skip the in cabin ads.
But even if I did use their services, wearing noise canceling headphones would not cost me more.
Are you sure you don't mean cross selling? IIUC upselling means trying to sell a customer a more expensive version of their chosen product, while cross selling means trying to sell extra products which combine well with the customer's chosen product.
I don't insist that others know the difference between software, a script, a program, and an executable, because my industry jargon isn't relevant to how they are interacting with it. I don't see why the specific jargon of how advertisers categorize or rename their advertisements is necessary for anybody outside of marketing to know.
An hardware store that puts a sign for a particular kind of painting is not doing advertising, it's promoting some product because maybe they have better margins on it or it sold so badly that they wanna get rid of what they have left.
a magazine putting the same product on display is advertising it, because they don't sell it or anything related to it.
if Ryanair showed on their website a link to an anti virus software or garden furniture, that would be plain and simple advertising.
advertising is a specific business
aggregators or Spotify playlists, even though they promote something and might profit from it, are not advertising
cross selling serves the purpose of giving customers options related to the product they are buying or using, like a train company asking if you want to buy food.
cross selling is easy to avoid: just ignore it.
what Ryanair does in cabin is advertising and it's much worse than having to say no to a rental car option in the checkout process.
Why should I want to buy a watch on a plane??
> between software, a script, a program, and an executable,
because they are different representations of the same thing.
That sounds like a form of advertising to me. The hardware store is placing something in public view in order to cause a different behavior in the public. That's advertising. Being done in-house, rather than subcontracting out the advertisements to another company, doesn't change its nature.
> cross selling serves the purpose of giving customers options related to the product they are buying or using, like a train company asking if you want to buy food.
So, cross selling is a form of advertisement, done for a different department within the same company.
> cross selling is easy to avoid: just ignore it.
I wouldn't say it is easy to "just" ignore any type of advertisement. They are crafted to be as difficult to ignore as possible.
> because they are different representations of the same thing.
Exactly! Just as a "script" and a "program" are technical terms that are merely different representations of the same thing, calling it "cross selling" or "up selling" or "promotions" are just different representations of advertising. There's no difference to the public between them.
Advertising is when they pay you to advertise the product.
Advertising is a marketing communication that employs an openly sponsored, non-personal message to promote or sell a product, service or idea. Sponsors of advertising are typically businesses wishing to promote their products or services. Advertising is differentiated from public relations in that an advertiser pays for and has control over the message. It differs from personal selling in that the message is non-personal, i.e., not directed to a particular individual
> Exactly! Just as a "script" and a "program" are technical terms that are merely different representations of the same thing, calling it "cross selling" or "up selling" or "promotions" are just different representations of advertising. There's no difference to the public between them.
No.
Baguette, ciabatta and pita are all different kinds of bread.
Just like a script and an executable are both software artifacts.
But pizza is not bread, even though it is made with the same ingredients, like a script is not a natively compiled program and an executable cannot be edited in a text editor and be run again or executed on an unsupported architecture.
Up/Cross selling is selling, advertising is advertising.
If you gloss over the distinction, you could say that Google Ads is the same thing as Amazon, because both display links to products you can buy.
Applying this definition to cross-selling:
> marketing communication
Putting a sign out for another product you sell is a form of marketing, and is intended to communicate to the reader.
> openly sponsored
Cross-selling messaging is openly sponsored by the company, and appears as a message from the company.
> non-personal message
Cross-selling isn't being sent directly to me, nor is it specifically aimed around me. It may be targeted toward people who fall into a similar category, but it isn't a personal message to me.
> to promote or sell
Cross-selling is an attempt to sell something.
> a product, service, or idea.
No restriction here about it being a product/service/idea sold by a different company, so this applies to cross-selling.
It meets every part of the definition you gave, and therefore pushes for cross-selling are a form of advertising.
Edit: Perhaps you're confused about the use of "that employs"? In this usage, "employs" doesn't mean "has a contractual relationship with" but instead means "uses".
Advertising is differentiated from public relations in that an advertiser pays for and has control over the message
me promoting a product I sell is not advertising. It's business. Businesses work on client's trust, promote a bad product, they'll leave you for someone else.
Sellers are not advertiser and vice versa.
Advertisers don't lose their job if they advertise a bad product, their job is to create a campaign for the product, their reputation does not depend on the quality of the product, but only on the quality of the ad.
Adding a feature to a software product is not marketing, it's a way to have an edge on the competition (or be on par)
If everything is advertising, than me giving you the phone number of my dentist should be advertising.
Giving me the phone number of your dentist would be a personal message, so it wouldn't be "advertising". It also wouldn't be paid for by your dentist, so not advertising.
Moving the goalpost
I explicitly made the example of an hardware store putting the signage for its own good
> I also ignored that sentence as it was adding clarification, not changing the initial definition.
clarification is what makes all the difference.
> Giving me the phone number of your dentist would be a personal message". It also wouldn't be paid for by your dentist, so not advertising
Funny that ADV nowadays says the same thing: "we think you might like this"
My dentist might also reward me for sending a new client.
The real difference is I don't sell dentists phone numbers as a job, that's why it is not advertising.
Like the hardware store sells wall paint and want people to tell their friends "try that store, they have this amazing wall paint, you won't be disappointed"
Now tbh, I have no idea if this is how it works. Just my own reasoning about things.
Ad revenue isn't needed to recoup sale-costs, because those exist for people who do not purchase. Those costs are zeroed out for the people who do purchase.
Making ads optional is often suggested, sometimes tried, and there aren't many success stories. Most successful combinations of ad/payment commercial strategies aren't customer choice scenarios.
Most subscription papers made more on ads than subscriptions, but subscribership made ads sell at a premium. The stable revenue is nice too. Ryanair clones use advertising as within their get-an-extra-penny ethos. Buses and such do the same.
A lot of people seem to like the theory of paid opt-out... but that doesn't seem to be a thing.
The fact that this even can be the case, though, I find interesting. It makes me wonder if YouTube is either subsidizing YouTube premium payouts, or simply waiting to squeeze the margins until there's more revenue. But if this is sustainable today, it seems promising.
Two things I've noticed is this:
- YouTubers pick up paid sponsorships in addition to advertisements presumably because today's viewership doesn't provide a good stable revenue, especially due to issues like demonetization. However, many videos that get demonetized are actually still eligible for revenue from YouTube Premium, according to LTT.
- Paid sponsors are much more likely to have no problems with edgier YouTubers and podcasters. I believe this to be a net good, especially since YouTube flourished as an edgy, scrappy alternative to traditional video content (maybe somewhat similar to how Flash games were a sort of edgy, scrappy alternative to conventional video games.)
I don't really want to pay Google more money, but I don't see serious alternatives to YouTube popping up, so I really hope the subscription model can work this way. Even if I have to skip or even sit through sponsor segments here and there, it feels like it's part of what could help save YouTube from just continuing to degrade into another version of TV that somehow is even more crappy and oversaturated. And some YouTubers even make the sponsor segments genuinely entertaining. (I think Internet Historian is a good example here, though as a warning his content is probably more crude than his name is evoking if you've never heard of the channel.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paramount%2B
But I think the real issue is this: aside from services that use ads as an explicit differentiator, there is really no reason for a service that charges customers not to also add ads. It's just extra revenue. The only reason I could see for services not wanting to do this is when they want to specifically cultivate a "premium" feel. Cable in the US was/is a classic example: people paid inordinate feels for access, and then also put up with ads on top of it all. And for a large segment of the population, cable was so ubiquitous as to be unthinkable not to subscribe to it.
Ads are annoying, and drive down usage?
“We’ll continue our interview after you watch these ads.” (Straps the suspect to a chair in a Clockwork Orange fashion)
“No! Not that! Not ads! Let me just admit to everything, sir!”
"L.P.D.: Libertarian Police Department"
https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/l-p-d-libertari...