When I raise concerns about ad-driven business models, most people shrug. Some may even get defensive. Ads pay a lot of salaries. They pay for so much of the online world that we consider essential. So why kick the golden goose?
Hear me out. Ads themselves are mostly harmless. We might complain about some overly loud videos for medicines we don’t need, or when ad-laden webpages jump around like monkeys on cocaine. We might vaguely suspect our cell phones spy on our conversations (they rarely do).
If you’re visiting a giant free buffet every day, you probably aren’t going to complain about the occasional rubber shrimp. We’re all familiar with the relatively minor costs of ads to our user experience. But are we really considering the harms that arise when advertising so heavily pays our way? Where is all this “free stuff” coming from? How does it affect us?
“Half of the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” — John Wanamaker
Ads are like Bets
Here’s a small idea to consider: advertisers are gambling on us.
They spend their budgets making ads and then bidding to place them. The better the ads succeed in engaging us, the more it may cost to sustain the…
