Learn how to deal with a ransomware attack with this free whitepaper: https://bit.ly/44cNIcr Grab a brand new laptop or desktop running Linux: https://www.tuxedocomputers.com/en# 👏 SUPPORT THE CHANNEL: Get access to a weekly podcast, vote on the next topics I cover, and get your name in the credits: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@thelinuxexp/join Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thelinuxexperiment Liberapay: https://liberapay.com/TheLinuxExperiment/ Or, you can donate whatever you want: https://paypal.me/thelinuxexp 👕 GET TLE MERCH Support the channel AND get cool new gear: https://the-linux-experiment.creator-spring.com/ 🎙️ LINUX AND OPEN SOURCE NEWS PODCAST: Listen to the latest Linux and open source news, with more in depth coverage, and ad-free! https://podcast.thelinuxexp.com 🏆 FOLLOW ME ELSEWHERE: Website: https://thelinuxexp.com Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/web/@thelinuxEXP Pixelfed: https://pixelfed.social/TLENick PeerTube: https://tilvids.com/c/thelinuxexperiment_channel/videos Discord: https://discord.gg/XMuQrcYd #internet #ads #marketingdigital 00:00 Intro 00:44 Sponsor: Learn how to deal with ransomware attacks 01:32 The ad-based internet 04:08 Twitter: anything but the kitchen sink 05:46 Reddit: shooting themselves in the foot 07:14 Youtube: nickel and diming 08:58 Alternative platforms won't save us 11:43 Three possible outcomes 14:41 The Ad Based internet is on its way out 15:13 Sponsor: Get a PC that was made to run Linux 16:02 Support the channel Google has shown that with enough scale, just running ads on a website is enough to keep the content free of charge. But of course, as with everything where money is involved, it went way too far. This limited the ad revenue, and so websites decided to add more ads. To compound that, ads started paying less and less, so websites started chasing profits by making the internet worse for everyone. Twitter's revenue is 89% ads. It has existed for more than 10 years, and has never made any money. So even at that scale, ads are just not working to sustain a company. All the changes Musk is making to Twitter, like firing most of the workforce, charging for the API, limiting the number of tweets, Twitter Blue, it's all to try and turn a profit. So, the experience of Twitter is now ten times worse, because ads don't work. Now let's look at Reddit. Reddit is about as popular as Twitter. And Reddit isn't profitable either. They're kept afloat by raising money from investors. And so Reddit charges for their API now. Reddit made their site worse for everyone: the regular users, and also everyone browsing the internet and landing on reddit to see a "this subreddit is private" message, making any web search ultra inefficient. And we can also look at Youtube. Youtube is HUGE. And it's hard to know if youtube is profitable or not. The consensus seems to be that it is, but the actions of youtube seem to indicate that maybe it's not THAT profitable. For example, youtube seems to be planning some moves against adblockers. Youtube is also taking steps against third party frontends, like Invidious. They wouldn't do stuff like that if profit growth was awesome. I love alternative platforms, but they'll probably never replace the giant ones: they don't offer a business model for people to create content on them. As a user, you probably don't care about that. And the person running the instance of said platform maybe is ready to fund it out of pocket, but the people creating the content on these platforms? They're not making money from them. And so as ad-based internet models start dying off, I have a feeling we're going to be faced with 3 options First, the big platforms survive as-is with the ads, you can still have ads on your own website, but the platforms will start keeping more and more of the ad revenue. This is where we're heading now. People are tired of ads and their privacy invasion, and the over abundance of them, but platforms seem to think this is the way to go. Second option, the big platforms and websites evolve to another model, like paywalling everything behind a paid subscriptions like Youtube Premium. It would basically kill off an entire portion of the internet, but it probably wouldn't be the worst portion to lose. Third option, the big platforms and the internet as a whole can't find a new model to replace ad based ones, and big platforms and big websites die off. Content creation becomes a hobby mostly. This is probably the best outcome for the internet as a whole, as it would probably kill off most clickbait, disinformation, AI generated crap. We would have far less things to read and watch, but a lot of if would be higher quality.
  • @[email protected]
    32•1 year ago

    People have been talking about an ad inflation.

    Showing one person 500 ads is just not going to make them buy 500 products. Out of all the ads a person sees, they’ll maybe buy one product which they wouldn’t buy anyways. And the value of that one product is the value those 500 ads have to share between each other.

    So, individual sites showing more ads just means they get a bigger slice of that cake. Until the other sites increase how many ads they shove into our faces, too.

    It ends up being an arms race and everyone loses.

  • AnonTwo
    21•1 year ago

    Did ad-based internet even stand a chance?

    The early internet curbtailed it because it started off over-intrusive even creeping into Windows system alerts. Even now ads have the stigma of being riddled with performance issues and malware. Are they even priced anywhere close to what cable TV ads are priced?

    • @ricecooker
      11•1 year ago

      Google and Facebook were both built on ad-based internet. So…until privacy is respected, cookies go away, and more importantly, people did not buy things based on ads, yeah ad-based internet stands a chance. I did a quick search on how big the digital advertising market is and there are various numbers being reported m. I’ll give you the lowest one—$~200 billion

      • LoafyLemon
        2•1 year ago

        Cookies are important. How else do we store user settings that cannot legally be stored on the server?

        • @MessyEh
          5•1 year ago

          Pretty sure he meant tracking cookies used by ad networks.

  • Yewb
    9•1 year ago

    I feel like immune to adds, i just don’t see them.

    • @Noxvento
      28•1 year ago

      Ublock Origin makes me immune to ads.

      • st3ph3n
        14•1 year ago

        Ublock Origin combined with a PiHole and SponsorBlock makes for a much nicer browsing experience.

        • Takatakatakatakatak
          14•1 year ago

          I run this combo at home. My daughter was 5 years old by the time we moved back to our home state and she got to spend a few nights at her grandparents house for the first time.

          My dad put a disney movie on for her and set her up with some popcorn and a blanket and shit whilst we sat outside having a beer. About 5 minutes later she came running out to tell us that something was wrong with the TV, and that it was broken.

          You know what was wrong with it? People were suddenly screaming at her at twice the volume of the original program. She’d never seen an advertisement before.

          I was quite proud of myself, but her reaction said it all for me. I’m 40 next year, and this shit has just gotten more ridiculous over time. Seems like boomers are the only people left on the planet that are prepared to be screamed at in their own homes. It aint for me, and clearly not for my daughter either.

          There’s be some growing pains over the next few years for sure, but as per the original video up top here I think it’s for the best. Being a “content creator” shouldn’t be a job. Leave it to the hobbyists. Consume less, create more.

        • Ronno
          3•1 year ago

          Yeah indeed, was sitting next to a someone on the bus the other day, she was browsing social media (I’m not even sure which app), she had to stop every minute or so to watch an ad. Wasn’t even phased about it. It is in those moments that I think the NPC theory is real, but I doubt it can be

    • LoafyLemon
      4•1 year ago

      This post is sponsored by uBlock Origin. (Not actually, but it’s the closest to the ad you’d get with uBlock Origin :-) )

  • @[email protected]
    8•1 year ago

    Advertising is the only industry where it’s collectively accepted that we pay protection money to not see the product.