Mockups for a free, ad-supported Uber service(andrewchen.co) |
Mockups for a free, ad-supported Uber service(andrewchen.co) |
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.
In the future all companies will have to do is offer an equivalent service ad-free in order to be innovative.
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.
How would you ad-support a full ride, anyways? A ~$20 CPI is pretty insane.
* 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.
What? Why?
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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
I'm selling some ad space on my terrace at $1 per pixel, in 10x10 increments. DPI negotiable.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
The real annoyance is surge pricing.
Also the install driven ad market has its limits. These are all funded by startups buying customers with their VC money.
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 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
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
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.
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.
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.
although somewhat easy to game the system.