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Comment by vonskippy | Hacker News Reader

Normally I'd be upset that another patent troll was winning in court - but come on, this is about a slimy patent troll that will be suing even more slimy advertising scum. I have to say I'm on the fence on this one.

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Google, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Gmail, Wordpress, and over half of the top websites in the world are slimy advertising scum?

Yes.

Exactly what is so terrible about advertisement, may I ask?

No.

Google, YouTube, and Gmail are all the same company.

Let me suggest you are not thinking straight. Advertising, like it or not, is what keeps the internet alive. Without this revenue stream it would collapse. The internet doesn't run on idealism, it runs on money. Before making statements like that go start a non-trivial internet-based based business and gain some understanding.

I think what crowdfunding has been showing us is that we have gone through a dark ages of internet business models (ads), in that the ease of marketing through ads blindsided people to pursuing more creative (and yes, often more laborious) business models.

I disagree ads are what keeps the internet alive. What keeps it alive are hackers and artists. They share this: an itch to create. They will create even for free. But we would have been so much ahead in creative business models that they could explore (see Kickstarter) in an alternate reality where ads did not exist.

Unreality. You can't run a business on Kickstarter money. It's a kick start. After that you need money from somewhere. Or do you expect people to eat bits?

If you are going to create an internet-based business that will support more than a few people (both users and employees with their families) you need money. Lots of it.

The user side is simple: As the user base grows your infrastructure requirements grow as well. And, at certain milestones these needs grow in large capex bursts. Flexible services such as AWS have made scaling far cheaper, more linear and less expensive, but it it still very expensive once you cross certain business-dependent thresholds. Hardware is hardware, whether you own it or not.

Of course, the team will scale based on other parameters. More engineers, more designers, customer service, accounting, operations, whatever. More people. Not working for peanuts of feel good hippie thoughts but for money. They need it to live, rent or buy a place to live, feed themselves and their families, save, invest, have fun, etc.

Given that internet culture quickly --from the very early days-- levitated to free and add-supported free most internet users only want to pay for their connectivity. Nobody wants to pay for anything on the internet. That's just a fact. Pick any service, say LinkeIn, far more free users than paid users. It's like that across the board.

Hell, it's even like that in mobile. Unless you get lucky it's nearly impossible to make money with paid apps. Make them free and then sell them something from within the app or support it with ads.

I stand by my original sentiment: The internet would collapse tomorrow if advertising was banned. That doesn't mean I prefer it that way. I am simply reflecting reality.

While I don't necessarily agree with the grandparent post, we should think back to the early days (in the early '90s) before the Net's full-scale commercialisation. It was a different Internet, much smaller and more uneven, but not necessarily a worse one. People paid for their own web hosting or used space provided by educational institutions/government.

The Internet didn't always run on big business - business gradually shaped it into the way it is today.

Except WildTangent isn't scrappy ad farm, it's a games company.

Regardless, I don't side with advertising models, they're what got us into this whole collecting data as a business hole, so if these scumbags can prevent companies from getting revenue from ads and thus encourage them to seek actual decent business models (as a non-intended adaptative collateral effect), I'd think it's one evil doing us good.

You are against all ad revenue?

Taking the internet as a whole, I think what ads contribute negatively more than offsets what small businesses and independent publishers gain from, well, existing and surviving because of ads. If that wasn't an option, we'd be forced to come up with more intelligent business models that would also tend to respect more the end user (i.e. so I'm not the product).

Making ad revenue, e.g. from Google, means you're reinforcing the big corporations who really need to market themselves through ads--those are the ones who could not live without ads (they need the constant intrusive, paid-for flow of unwilling eyeballs to keep their investors happy), not the independ publishers (who I think could.) Niche ad networks are alright, but nevertheless they contribute to making it easy not to think hard (and work hard) to pursue alternate business models.

Advertising is a two-sided market. As a business with a product/service to be advertised, how would I go about acquiring customers without ads? Everyone from credit card companies to the local dentist has the need to market.

Instead of looking from the point of view of business, why don't you try to look from the point of view of the consumer and see where it gets you?

That's the approach taken by the people behind Project VRM and Doc Searls' Intention economy[1].

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intention_economy

It has its merits, but can't completely supplant the value of advertising.

The biggest need is brand advertising. If Coca Cola reduced their brand advertising, their sales would go decline. Maybe I'm not imaginative, but I don't see an intention economy product for beverages, where the transaction cost is low and the switching cost is zero. People don't actively think, "what would I like to drink today?"

Another need is driving awareness. Movie releases depend upon heavy ad campaigns to ensure that people know when a movie is coming out. A different example is changing service providers, like a cell phone or car insurance. Sure you might one day decide to comparison shop, but Sprint's new unlimited plan, or Geico's "save 15% or more" campaign are effective at encouraging a switch when it wasn't within consideration.

I don't drink soft beverages whenever I can buy/order beer. And whenever I can order several types of beer, I think "what would I like to drink today?", so I don't see the problem. It's actually a pretty fun decision.

"Brand advertising" means making companies far more rich they than needed to be. I'd prefer an economy where companies actually rely on their product being good and people telling each other (see craft beers), and no, I don't think it's healthy for them to grow into mega-corps (which they wouldn't be able to do without ads.)

As for awareness and changing service providers, again, word of mouth and spontaneous sharing of links and stories on the internet.

Movie releases depend upon heavy ad campaigns to ensure that people know when a movie is coming out.

Again, that's the seller's perspective. Under the buyer's, they could make their intention of knowing about the new releases if they wanted to. Better yet, they could announce what kind of films they want to know about, instead of being drowned in ads for Fast and Furious 348.

A different example is changing service providers, like a cell phone or car insurance. Sure you might one day decide to comparison shop, but Sprint's new unlimited plan, or Geico's "save 15% or more" campaign are effective at encouraging a switch when it wasn't within consideration.

You shouldn't need to comparison shop. The point of the Intention economy is that you announce to the market of your intentions and desires, and let it come to you with bids that fit what you need.

A generic "I want to know about offers that are strictly better than my current plans" would in fact be a decent intent to announce, but it should be at one's discretion and adjust itself to one's conditions (for example, no point in getting such information if you're locked in a contract).

To be clear, I think that IE can be a good complement to advertising in some industries and use cases, but I think it's a poor wholesale replacement.

I just think customers are bad at describing what they like/want. They need to see it. That's why product demos, movie trailers, and coupons are an effective call to action.

But no reason to believe me -- anyone's free to test with an IE-driven offer. No reason why it can't coexist with advertising.

(oops, replied to my own post instead of hitting edit)

Collecting data is not part of the patented business model. You don't have to show ads to collect and sell user data.

Every TV show, magazine or newspaper you liked, watched or read is the result of advertising. The internet is no different except that it is a larger market where you make less with advertising. Yes old model ads suck even on Hulu Plus you get them, but content costs are high without them or may not even exist. Many a good shows would have not existed. Advertising has been an engine to creative entertainment + information.

I haven't read newspapers or magazines in a long, long time, and TV shows I could easily live without (don't watch any in close to a year), especially if we had indie shows with interesting business models to replace them. I'd gladly pay for my content, but I think there's other models to be explored without appealing to ads. Ads are everywhere because they're easy to put to work, and the payout is potentially really high (if you're ok with helping big corps, their investors, and the centralization of wealth.)

There have been a lot of indie shows popping up via Kick starter funding. Here are two off the top of my head:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/freddiew/video-game-high...

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pemberleydigital/the-liz...

It has. It's also the reason why alternative ways of financing the content aren't being widely explored. And it's not like you're not still paying for those TV shows and magazine's, indirectly and inefficiently and fueling the brainscrambling agencies along the way. TANSTAAFL.

> Every TV show, magazine or newspaper you liked, watched or read is the result of advertising.

No it isn't. Aside from that which I pay for through Netflix (no ads), I pretty much only watch and listen to the various BBC outlets (no ads, and I pay my license fee). I pay for Spotify and Audible and I buy CDs. I like paying money for things because I also hate advertising.

> Every TV show, magazine or newspaper you liked, watched or read is the result of advertising.

Unless you like/watch/read (for example) TV shows on premium cable, Consumer Reports, etc.

You think premium cable doesn't have advertising? Even putting aside shilling for their own shows, what do you think "sneak peeks" at new movies are?

"Has advertising" and "is the result of advertising" aren't the same thing. There's a big difference between things like network TV or most newspapers/magazines where the main thing paying the bills is advertising, and things where advertising is a very distantly behind other revenue sources.

WildTangent? Aren't they an ex-spyware firm?

A "gaming company" that has knowingly developed and distributed spyware.

Thankfully, one's legal rights don't depend on how "slimy" you are and abuses of the law remain abuses even when slimy entities are the ones abused.

These media providers may have to pay licensing fees to show ads. The margins are so slim, some media could become paid content or just stop being produced.

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