Netflix waited until they had sufficiently killed off cable TV, then went back to creating the same problem it fixed. No ads in ChatGPT today, but soon as it (or a competitor) gains meaningful marketshare, there will be ads.
Not necessarily true. Physical billboards are ads but (mostly) without privacy concerns, until they start putting cameras on them watching who walks by and looks.
After I make my decision and buy one (online, or in person), I no longer search for "vacuum cleaner reviews", but I search instead for "skiing in January" and I no longer get adverts for vacuum cleaners, I get it for ski resorts.
Odd take IMO that Google's ever encroaching ads make their product better. Heck, Larry and Sergei even wrote a treatise (it used to be available directly off google.com, can't remember the name) about how they would be different from search engines at the time, how they wouldn't sell search position, and how the ads model was fundamentally at odds with end user experience. That's hilarious now as Google has gone to great lengths to make ads as indistinguishable as possible from normal search results, and for some terms my entire front page is ads. Compare that to "early" Google where ads were clearly identified in top and right sections with a yellow banner.
Hey! You just bought a filter for your air purifier! Want to buy a new one! For a different purifier you don't own!
No, talk to me in six months.
https://www.jcdecaux.com.au/news-around-world/jetstar-and-jc...
Most newspapers require payment but have no ad free option either.
Of course, consumers cannot possibly estimate the cost of ads. They can't tell how much of the stuff they buy is because they're influenced, or how many years of life they throw away by watching ads in the long run. Ads could be costing them 1 dollar a year, or maybe 1,000. But they don't know, and they sure as hell won't be paying 5 bucks for a product if there's a "free" ad version.
What does that even look like, practically speaking? Is sponsored segment an ad? Is wearing branded apparel an ad? Is doing a press junket for a new movie an ad?
I’m not convinced.
Not running ads is what you do when you care about user experience. If you start running ads it’s because you care more about money than user experience.
As long as there is robust competition the consumer’s preferences will be favored, because success comes at their discretion.
So I think it’s more like “wherever the consumer isn’t the customer there will be ads”.
Company B has ads. Company B makes more money and can therefore provide more features / more content. Company B ends up providing more of what users want.