Y Combinator-Backed InstallMonetizer Is A Selective Ad Network For Desktop | Hacker News Reader

Y Combinator-Backed InstallMonetizer Is A Selective Ad Network For Desktop

techcrunch.com

24 pointsdmoney673 comments

For those who were unaware this market existed: if you hypothetically distributed a downloadable application, you'd be bored to tears of sales reps (or spambots) from Pay Per Install advertising companies attempting to sign you up for their platform. The going rate was about $1 a download (n.b. that figure is very outdated -- probably less these days). This is -- again, not talking about the YC company here -- for encouraging customers to either change their search engine provider to one who pays the PPI network, install a toolbar in their browser or desktop which either shows ads or gets searches (more commonly), or just going ahead and rooting the user.

I'll confess that I haven't always been a model of politeness when responding to these sales pitches.

This is one of the many, many avenues on the Internet advertising chain by which billions of dollars is transferred between large, publicly well-regarded companies and six layers of intermediaries and... folks who the large, well-regarded companies would never, ever, ever do business with.

I am sure everyone has had a slimy experience with desktop applications (usually windows based) sneaking or including advertising. I for sure have spent way too much time cleaning adware off family computers.

My comment about this startup would be: "what makes you any different, other than your promise to keep it professional and clean from the junk" - because its a slippery slope and %99 of the time the users won't know the difference between your ads and the slimy ones.

“We looked really really hard to find legitimate sources of income [from free downloads],”

Don't?

In all seriousness, should a source of income from hosting free downloads exist? The very nature of the consumer's expectations is why it is so hard to find a legitimate source of income. If you can't make it work without deception, then don't host free downloads.

This is a problem with free software. It's free to make, free to use, but has a distribution cost.

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