Mockups for a free, ad-supported Uber service | Hacker News Reader

Mockups for a free, ad-supported Uber service

andrewchen.co

83 pointsandrew_null50 comments

This reminded me of the future that Black Mirror's Fifteen Million Merits envisions for us: "Everyday activities are constantly interrupted by advertisements that cannot be skipped or ignored without financial penalty." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifteen_Million_Merits

I've only seen the first season of Black Mirror but I already love the show. I work in tech so some of the "possible futures" are a little scary/humbling. I worry about "Pay $X to skip this ad" becoming common place and similar sensors as were in that episode that detected when the human wasn't paying attention and waited until they opened their eyes or looked back at screen to continue.

I highly recommend that everyone check out Black Mirror, it's less of a TV show and more of a small collection (3 episodes per season) of mini-movies that don't really connect to each other but show possible outcomes of certain ideas taken to the extreme.

Definitely seconding that recommendation. It is fantastic how uncomfortable it makes me feel; I usually don't get too many emotions from media.

I pay for Netflix and Spotify so that I don't have to deal with ads. I'll happily continue to pay for Uber and similar services for the very same reason.

there's no reason we can't have both. Uber can always have an option to disable ads if the user isn't interested in saving money.

Oh absolutely. While I despise advertising for my own personal reasons, I know that there are plenty of people out there who would happily accept a free, ad-based version of these services (assuming it's possible for this model to actually generate enough revenue).

What would you do if Netflix/Amazon/Google/Apple started thinking it was acceptable to both display ads and charge you?

I thought you were going the other way around. There's no reason that we can't have both: Uber could charge us and still show us ads. It works for Comcast.

There is also heavy advertising on existing transit. Subways, buses, and taxis in New York are plastered with ads.

Those services will eventually add advertisements even for paying customers. It's just a matter of time. Cable's initial idea was TV without ads. Now all you see on Cable is ads.

In the future all companies will have to do is offer an equivalent service ad-free in order to be innovative.

> Cable's initial idea was TV without ads. Now all you see on Cable is ads.

Whenever I see people that believe that ads vs paid is a either/or proposition, I utter "Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it". It is much more likely that Uber will both charge and display ads; than to give people alternatives on how to fund their ride.

I am old enough to actually remember cable without ads. Maybe this is the main reason I feel completely okay with the morality aspects of using ad-blockers or pirating movies/shows I can't get on my region, or even downloading songs and trying to support musicians by actually going to concerts.

Inevitable? I thought engagement with advertising was going down all over the world.

How would you ad-support a full ride, anyways? A ~$20 CPI is pretty insane.

"I thought engagement with advertising was going down all over the world."

Is this true? I thought engagement with digital ads was going up and its only in the "techsphere" that people use stuff like AdBlock et al.

No, engagement metrics are certainly down because total number of ads are way up while the number of eyeballs watching them aren't increasing nearly as quickly. But it's actually really hard to measure engagement with digital ads since the vast majority of digital ads are display ads.

Furthermore, there's no real metric that can determine whether or not a user even looked at an ad: yes, the ad was loaded by the user's browser, but the user may not have scrolled down the page far enough to actually see the ad, or if they simply scrolled past it without actually looking at it. Because there is no good way to measure engagement, advertisers tend to create ads that promote being noticed over user engagement. Publishers have reacted by loading ads in different ways (e.g. multiple page articles, progressive page loading, etc.) to support higher ad rates on premium content.

There was a recent trend in last few years that showed mobile ads had higher engagement levels, though many in the industry now think that a substantial portion of this is due to "mis-clicks" on mobile ads. The trend is moving away from click-throughs as a measure of engagement as a result of unscrupulous publishers building sites that make it reeeeeally easy to mis-click on an ad. Regardless, measurement is a huge problem in the digital space when it comes to engagement; though the trends relating to engagement on a per-ad basis are almost certainly declining simply due to the increase in quantity of ad inventory and the reduction in transactional friction involved in advertising over the last 10 years.

It's called banner blindness. "Engagement" of ads is dropping like an anchor yet prevalence of ads is skyrocketing. So you could say the mean effectiveness is really dropping because of this.

I don't know if I've gone under $30 for an Uber ride more than once. So yeah, I agree, I don't see how this becomes viable.

FWIW, if you live in San Francisco it is common for your ride to be $10-12. With the recent Uber Pool promos it was $5 (or now $7). So at least in one market, there are many cheap rides being taken.

That said, in-app advertising is not the kind of premium/magical experience that has so far defined the Uber brand. That clash of clans banner looks downright painful. I don't expect ads any time soon; it's more the kind of move I'd expect once they're done being a growth business and shift gears into cash extraction. Years off at the soonest.

Personally, I've taken rides for $45 split 4 ways, but more often than not it's $5-7/per trip for two. I'm no power user, but also probably wouldn't call a cab in those situations either.

restaurant / hotel sponsorship has potential - could be worth throwing in a free ride to get someone to your expensive restaurant.

although somewhat easy to game the system.

Advertising works best where the marginal cost of delivering the impression is near-zero (i.e., TV, radio, newspaper, magazine, internet search, Facebook newsfeed, etc).

Half-bakery: Uber rides funded by menial tasks. You're in a van heading from A to B, while ironing shirts or folding clothes or packing boxes.

One of the reasons that ad supported models work is that the marginal cost of providing software is near zero. The marginal cost of providing rides is decidedly non-zero. I would argue that the marginal cost of a ride is going to increase from its present cost.

* There is a price war going on and some of the providers are losing money. In the short term this will continue, but long term it will correct itself.

* I believe the regulations on company -> contractors a la Uber will increase and that will cost Uber more per ride.

* Even if you think the drivers will be replaced with self driving cars, those cars will be more expensive than present day cars.

I don't think any of that is a problem for Uber as a business charging money. I do think it precludes ad-supported rides.

> Free, ad-supported Uber rides are inevitable

What? Why?

------------------

While we're at it, why not post ads along the sides of houses and apartment buildings in the Bay Area to reduce housing costs?

Maybe if we make the ads small enough, we could fit enough ads on a single surface to make rent free!!!

/sarc

milliondollarapartment.com

I'm selling some ad space on my terrace at $1 per pixel, in 10x10 increments. DPI negotiable.

Too late: "Paint Your House With Ads, Get Your Mortgage Paid"

http://www.npr.org/2011/04/07/135199159/last-word

I'm fine with ads. But I see much more promise for ads before getting in car, then after. While waiting for Uber/Lyft I check my phone non-stop. The second I'm in the car the last app I'm opening is Uber/Lyft.

Some of the ideas of "why it would work" make sense, but the economics are way off.

> For example, targeting travelers who are arriving from the airport, to target them with highly personalized hotel/tour offers. Or targeting hardcore movie or concert-goers for their next night out.

This is the basic premise of the OP's advertising argument. Does anyone book hotel or conferences ad hoc? Anything that is "event" based selling opportunity is a no go, because most event organizers want high up front guarantees of attendees (due to high fixed costs) and usually sell last minute excess at very low margins, so paying a converted CPM at $20 (or heck even $10) is most likely going to bring a negative return.

I think there is a bit of a fallacy around certain business models. We're constantly amazed at how much is free or low priced due to being ad supported (Google), Moores Law et al (Dropbox), or strategically subsidized (Amazon).

The fallacy is that these apply to everything or that it seems easier to apply than it actually is.

In the case of free Uber, the most I can stretch is to imagine it's possible when the targeting gets so good that a lead is very valuable (weren't cancer class action click throughs going for $200 at one point?). Or as part of some partnership with another company such that other economics are at work besides watch ad = ride free.

So not only is it not inevitable, it would require some pretty special conditions.

Remember the New Economy? No, a lot of us don't. See, that's the problem.

I've welcome Uber's business plan. Ads are not the answer for everything. Quite the contrary, I'd argue that ads are the answer for very few problems.

Money or any monetary transactions plays two roles in these kind of business. The unrecognized one is that it plays the role of guarantee (ideally, but in reality is something like 'more or less'). What guarantee do I have as a driver or as a client if I use an ad-supported billing system, which we all know is next to crap? This is a really poorly-thought idea. Uber's strength is in the elegance of its business model.

I'd be fine with this as long as there's a way to turn this off (or better yet, to make it something entirely opt-in and have to turn it on). I wouldn't want to be bombarded with ads if I'm not interested in them subsidizing my ride.

Also, is there a way to make these companies just pay me to look at their ads? It'd cut out the middlemen, and seeing how many ads I'd probably be confronted with on a daily basis without things like AdBlock Plus, I could probably turn it into a career if the figures in this article are accurate.

Why do you think Google has invested so much in self-driving cars?

That's not free. You're spending time in exchange for goods. Time you otherwise could save by just spending a few dollars.

The real annoyance is surge pricing.

"Due to extremely high demand, surge pricing is in effect. Your ride will now cost a 30-minute timeshare presentation, by a sales agent who'll be riding along with you."

Can I make a friendly reminder that if they didn't use surge pricing then the wait during heavy traffic times would be a lot longer. So it is a tradeoff between higher cost and shorter wait times. I think the real annoyance then is the other customers who want to use the service bidding up my price.

Honestly I hate the idea of MORE ads.

Also the install driven ad market has its limits. These are all funded by startups buying customers with their VC money.

Weird to see all this hate in the comments. Ads aren't the devil. More options to paying for something of value is always beneficial.

An accessible business model that anyone can openly innovate on. Certainly, this must contribute to the $24B valuation...

I can imagine these being offered free by companies who want an ear to talk to. If I'm selling time shares, for example, I might want to give free rides and tell people about it on the way. If you got a multi-thousand dollar sell every 100 rides, maybe it's worth it.

Wow, now having looked at the mockup images under the Redirection heading, this does really seem inevitable. Free might be a stretch, but I'd bet that we'll see these types of ads when using rideshare services in the very near future.

There are some countries where the taxi drivers will "advertise" businesses by taxing you to them whether you asked them or not. That's pretty much the only way you could make ad-supported taxis work.

We're getting to a point where it's just services supported by ads for other services which are supported by ads for other services and so on.

s/getting/returning/

This was a driving force in the dotcom crash. dotcom revenue was based on advertising other dotcoms.

The problem with castles in the air is they always come crashing down.

I don't get the hate, I think it's a great idea. It's completely opt-in and both sides win.

"Both sides win" when a consumer chooses to spend their money on gambling. They're getting what they pay for, of their own volition.

I consider advertising to be offensive, and think it's appropriate for a society (big or small) to control what forms of ads are allowed via law. I'd like to see limits on what sorts of trade-offs we can make with respect to ads, so that the life experience of a citizen need not be drowning in advertisement.

Riding a taxi in NYC (where ads are built-in to the cabs and cannot be stopped) is a distinctly unpleasant experience compared to elsewhere. We can only have so many forms of transit available to the people of NYC. I would rather we choose to remove the ads and pay for the transportation system via direct-monetary transfer, or taxation, or some combination. shrug

Hit the button on the bottom right corner of the screen. First thing I do when I get in a taxi.

It doesn't turn off the screen, and it doesn't turn off the ads. It stops the moving video and audio, and replaces it with a mostly-static blue screen with a few ads that jump position on the screen now and then.

"Both sides win" when a consumer chooses to spend their money on gambling. They're getting what they pay for, of their own volition.

Yes, they do. With some exceptions, gambling is an harmless activity that people engage in just for the fun, not expecting to win. Or quoting Motörhead: You win some, lose some, it's all the same to me / The pleasure is to play, it makes no difference what you say / I don't share your greed

This makes me sad. The mock-ups, I don't like them much.

ugh

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