Samsung Buys Every Ad Position on CNet On New iPhone Launch Day
news.cnet.com
news.cnet.com
What isn't worth what, exactly? The content isn't worth the ads? Then don't read it. Deciding that it "isn't worth" supporting web site owners is a fantastically selfish way to look at things. If I find a site with obnoxious advertising I close the tab and go elsewhere. It's not like there aren't other sources of iPhone 5S release news.
Before this descends into a "this isn't stealing" circular debate, my point is that just because you can get something for free that you would normally have to pay for (be it in money or screen real estate) doesn't mean you should.
I am not implying that you owe them your screen real estate, I am outright stating it.
A better analogy would be a pizza company that gives out free pizzas, no questions asked. However, they get money every time a customer eats an olive on the pizza. When they give me the pizza, they know very well that I can just pick off the olives (I hate olives). So I am well within my right to pick off olives. The problem is their business model, not me picking off the olives.
Now, imagine this store would offer the Sprite free-to-fetch BUT there is a man singing next to the fridge which sells CDs of his recordings. It is not obligatory to buy a CD before you fetch a Sprite. However, the man ocassionally jumps in front of the fridge and tries to make eye-contact to give you his best shot at convincing you to buy a CD of his. Annoying, isn't it?
This man adds no value to the Sprite you can get for free yet he tries to sell you a CD you didn't ask for! Well, apparently the store owner made a deal with the man: for every CD he sells, he gets a nice commission. Would you steal the Sprite if you put on sunglasses (to avoid eye-contact) and wore earbuds (so his singing doesn't bother you) every time you get a free Sprite from the fridge?
If you know the answer, you know whether ad blocking is stealing. Now, if the set-up would be "Buy a CD and get a Sprite" (a pay wall) you would indeed be stealing if you got the sprite without paying.
These companies can't enforce that their ads are shown at the other end, so they make a business decision regarding revenue fully knowing that some people use technology to block the ads.
This is the flip side of the open source credo. So if you consider the "You have two choices, user our free software and let everyone who you give it to also use it and modify it, or don't use it."
Web sites aren't there yet, but they will get there which will be you can view our site with ads or you can not view our site, your choice.
In both the FOSS case and the web site case, the organization is trying to leverage their 'value' (working code, information content) into a desired 'behavior' (giving away code, seeing ads). As more an more web sites shut down and the choices narrow, the value of good content goes up. And at some point they will be confident enough to disable your access to it in response to disabling ads. (Ars Technica did some interesting experiments in this space).
As the web matures, and moves past the 'browser experience' I expect you will see more and more of that.
A FOSS-evangelist (like RMS) is not the same as an "open source user". "would not visit" is a bit of an heavy implication for the latter.
Alternatively, do you only use services for which you pay a fee?
Which search engine do you use?
Email?
Social sites?
Just trying to understand this position. Unless someone explicitly gives a product or service away (HN being a good example) the correct moral and ethical position is to not tamper with their revenue generation strategy or otherwise not use their product or service. Anything else is theft.
Being annoyed does not entitle you or anyone else to steal. It doesn't magically make it OK.
The only reason this argument ever came about is because it's easy to measure who sees an ad on the internet, which is not the case for billboards, TV commercials, newspaper ads, and so on. Since the measurement was cheap and intuitively it made sense for advertisers to charge based on the number of people that see or click on an ad, they chose to pay website owners based on the fine grained statistics of the webpage rather than by assessing a priori the market value of an ad on a particular webpage for a particular length of time.
The "theft" here is imaginary and entirely self-imposed by the business model of the advertiser. Especially when you consider that the demographic that uses adblockers probably wouldn't click on very many ads if they didn't use the adblockers. And whatever impression the mere presence of an advertisement would create might very well be a negative one to this demographic.
The conceptual leap from "our business model requires ads to make money" and "some people don't want to view these ads" to "those people are stealing from us" is a syllogistic fallacy.
Don't want ads? Don't use the service. Go pay for a service that will use your money to build a site without the ads that bug you so much.
Where possible, I do exactly that. For example, I have a Netflix subscription, but don't watch regular TV.
The reality is that many services are simply not offered in an ad-free model. Most people are ok with ad-supported services in exchange for not paying for them, so the business case for creating an ad-free version for the minority that isn't ok with ads doesn't always exist. But those who don't want to have their browsing experience polluted by distracting and space wasting ads for irrelevant products aren't suddenly going to change their minds because they're in the minority.
Personally, I would be willing to pay a small monthly fee for an ad blocker (I did make a donation once) and have a portion of that distributed to website owners whose ads were blocked. It's probably not a very realistic scenario, but the bottom line is that an ad blocker is something that many people find useful and which some would be willing to pay for if there weren't ample free alternatives. The adblocker provides a service to me 100% of the time I visit a website with ads, whereas an ad is only useful to me if I find it relevant and choose to act on it (0.000001% of the time).
> The content is free to consume by anyone
Utter nonsense. Opinions like these only come from people who don't understand business, have never run one and never risked their own capital, effort and health launching one.
Nonsense.
It's just like reading a physical newspaper without paying for it and, at the same time, having some kind of a machine that blacks out all of the advertising. Stealing. Plain and simple.
Businesses cost money to run. Advertising is an age-old method to make money. And for some businesses that's the best way to support their operations.
Look at Google [0]. It costs TEN BILLION DOLLARS TO RUN GOOGLE FOR JUST THREE MONTHS. TEN FUCKING BILLION. And you would use Google with an ad blocker? How dare you!
Take it to an extreme: Starting tomorrow everyone in the world uses ad blockers. The internet would collapse overnight.
Either pay for the service or allow the ads. Yes sir! You are stealing.
The internet predates internet advertising. Many sites use different business models and are profitable without relying on ads. If everyone in the world used ad blockers, many websites would die, but if these websites actually provided a useful service, replacements would spring up using alternate business models because the internet is about as close to a free market as currently exists.
There are people who will justify just about anything, including gassing innocent children. That's the nature of the world we live in. I am not equating the two at all. Simply stating that human beings are pretty good about justifying bad things they choose to do.
As I have stated repeatedly, if you told me that you did not use any of these services that derive revenue from advertising I'd definitely hold you up as an example of taking the correct moral and ethical road. Saying that ads are annoying, look ugly or have potential security problems (bullshit) AND on top of it, still going to those sites to use their work product for free. Well, you are a thief.
I am not exposing myself to possible malicious advertising networks, tracking and obnoxious, intrusive ads with sound and whatnot. deal with with it.
Do you get paid for the work you do? Do you think others ought to get paid for their work? Well, if you don't like advertising don't steal their work product by using their sites through ad blockers.
It really is a simple concept. All arguments to the contrary sound like a five year old kid crying "I don't care! I want it! I want it! I want it!".
Granted, while effective, Samsung's strategy is rather predictable and easily (albeit expensively) countered by buying the ad space yourself. Why Apple didn't do this, I don't know. It would have been the first thing I would have done as the VP of Marketing at Apple once I knew the launch date.
Just like how Apple doesn't need to buy billboards at the mall when they have bright, inviting stores of their product to entice you.
In other words, if Samsung is buying advertising to crowd out competitors' ads on the day of an Apple product launch, Apple is surely not the competitor they're hoping to crowd out.
http://www.cultofmac.com/150519/massive-apple-air-freight-de...
Bad for the planet too, and all just to save a couple of weeks on a boat. Buying up ad space seems pretty minor by comparison. I guess minor does go along with "petty". Funny how we're sometimes much more upset about a small slight than a large one.
If you're trying to draw a comparison, maybe a better way to compare would be to say that Apple buys up empty carriers just to keep Samsung from moving their stuff?
Apple turns over their inventory almost as fast as McDonald's. Think about that.
But then, I'm also very neutral in the iPhone vs. Android debate.
Why is it not frowned upon when it is exhibited by a group of people operating as one; as a corporation?
Because who cares, aside from Apple fans? When an individual is petty, the target of that pettiness is a person. When a company is petty, the target of that pettiness is another company. Why become personally attached to that? It isn't your profit at stake.
Besides, if we judged companies that way what would Walmart be? A sociopathic killer, or something...
Is making their own blue stuff petty, or is it when they display it next to the brand name blue stuff that it becomes petty?
Good for Samsung, good for smartphone buyers, and even if it's not good for Apple's bottom line this year, this sort of competition should be healthy. If they can't compete with the knock-offs, it's time to stop buying Apple products.
It is indeed. Samsung spends a roughly-flat 15% of their revenue on advertising. As their cellphone share grows, this spending grows... to obscene levels.
http://www.asymco.com/2012/11/29/the-cost-of-selling-galaxie...
But I don't use AdBlock, just NoScript. If CNet wanted to serve me ads without random code that I must execute, I'd see them, no problem at it.
If you don't see it, perhaps you have AdBlocker on?